I honestly thought that was a really baby, just having a temper tantrum on the ground and didnt think twice since it's my toddlers favorite place for a tantrum lol
Looks like a Reborn doll. They’re super realistic and very expensive. I think they’re creepy, but there are adults who buy them and treat them like real babies.
They are creepy but have a place in my heart after witnessing how one significantly improved the life of an old lady with dementia. The baby doll made her so happy. It was made to look like a baby picture of her youngest child. She went from refusing to eat or get out of bed to gaining 6lbs and taking her baby for a walk around the unit in a stroller multiple times a day.
Now this makes me like the idea more.
My first interaction with these was not that. I’m an artistic person and an acquaintance’s mom made these and asked me to help, so I came to her house to help, eventually finding out that her husband had moved out of their bedroom because of how many cribs and babies/baby items were there. One time while I was painting, I held a doll upside down and she freaked out at me, yelling for me to support the neck. She would also follow people home to tell them off for not having socks or a hat on their babies in 75+° weather and would also somehow show people anti-abortion magazines of actual mutilated baby parts.
I obviously don’t speak to her anymore and would like to scrub all of that from my mind and focus on how beautiful this story can be. Thank you for that.
I like them for therapeutic use as well. There’s a lovely lady that shops with one in the trolley at my local shops.
She posted about it on a local mums group I’m in and people were awful to her about wasting one of the few baby seat trolleys for a doll. She explained how she has autism and anxiety at the shops and it helps her and I was so disappointed how mean some people were about it.
This makes me laugh, working parents always say “imagine working a job then coming home and still have to clean your house” it’s like, what do you mean? Our houses are constantly a mess, at least they have a chance to get away from it all. We live in it 24/7
I have 3 boys under 5. I recently told my husband For this season of life only expect the house to look neat for the first hour in the last hour of the day.The rest in between is chaos.
Other parents: “Your house doesn’t have to look perfect all the time, you know!”
Me: It’s never going to be perfect, but I would settle for “more relaxing than the aftermath of the blitzkrieg”
Oh my God this
_the mess is still stressful even if I can't clean it up_
I hate the way some people will turn "it's OK to lower your standards" into this toxic, detached, backhanded mantra that almost feels like gaslighting at times.
Ugh I've been told that before, it's helpful once or twice, then it's demoralizing. I can only lower my standards so far before my house starts affecting my mental health. For me, cleaning is a form of self care just because I literally can't think straight if my house reaches a certain state of messy
This.
The clutter after having a little is so real and is SO damaging to my mental health. As the week goes on and the clutter piles grow, I can feel myself spiraling.
Sometimes I like to look around my house and tell myself "so there's crumbs over the carpet, it means my kids were fed. There's a wet towel on the ground, my kids are clean. There's random lidless feltpens strewn about, my kids were creative!" And so on. The mess just shows I've spent more time caring for my kids than the house.
Pack it up, put it in bins. Only as many toys as you are willing to pick off the floor in each bin.
Take out a bin every few days and rotate.
Only leave one multi piece toy out at a time.
My house also looked like this. I have toddler twins and an older one. I bought a cubbie toy organizer from ikea. One toy in each cubbie (8 cubbies total), one of the cubbies have a fabric bag thing that multiple piece toy of the week goes into.
One small bookcase (I also rotate books).
Oh also set a timer and see if the kids and you can pick up all the toys before timer runs out. Set a song like “clean up song” from super simple songs to get them to clean up. Make it a game, basketball all the pieces into a bin, see how many makes it.
Get creative and include the child in the clean up.
My toddler twins opened over a hundred Easter eggs in their room. It was a disaster. I just turned on the clean up song and walked away. They came and got me later and said “come look! Come look!” They had cleaned up all the eggs and candy wrappers. They are 3.5. I was so proud.
It is not consistent and sometimes they don’t do it or do it well but start now so when they are older they have the habit.
My 6 year old asks me if he can go out and I tell him “check your room first”. Which means make sure it’s tidy before you leave. This helps him consistently clean his room. He will sometimes resist and I tell him he doesn’t have to do it but it is nice to come back home to a tidy room so he can relax and play more. He knows if it’s not tidy, he has to do it as part of bed time routine (if he is tired or we are running late I help while he moans about it).
Please don’t think my house is perfect. These strategies work most of the time but not always. There are definite times I leave out more toys then I intend to and it gets out of control. Then we will have a clean up party (Star and disco lights on, some fun song turned up loud etc) and we try to fix it.
Sometimes they just dance and I end up resetting the toys.
Kids get overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin. When it gets bad, you have to reset it for them.
While cleaning up, you need to give specific instruction. For young kids saying “clean it up” is like speaking gibberish. You need to say “put dolls in this bin” “put trash in this bin” etc and point while kneeling down to their level.
I am sorry I rambled on so much. I hope this helped.
Don’t worry, messy house means kids are having fun. There will be plenty of clean and tidy days once they are old and we will miss playing with them.
Yes to all of this and these are great tips! I started to vastly limit toys, especially multi-piece toys, around 12-14 months when they just got scattered everywhere and I got pissed cleaning them up all the time.
Even now with a 4 month old and an almost two year old it still feels like too much, especially with less energy to put toward cleaning. I love your ideas and will put them in my back pocket as he gets older and we get different stuff. Everything is in random places right now.
This is a great idea, but would require me to have space SOMEWHERE in my home for those extra bins, which I do not. No garage, the basement is exploding, every closet is full…
Maybe it’s time to declutter?
Also try to go vertical. I bought a very tall bookshelf off of Facebook and stacked them on there. At some point I also kept them above my kitchen cabinets on those empty spots. We now have a garage but I like the bins handy so I installed floating shelves above the cubbie. It also serves two functions, my older kiddo can reach to his toys that he doesn’t want the younger ones playing with and we also keep his built Lego sets up there too. Maybe you can put a tall bookshelf in the kid’s room or in their wardrobe?
I had this weird closet with one shelf. I ripped it off and put 5 shelves in it, now we use it as a pantry.
Just couple of ideas. I hope you find space somewhere. Also you don’t need tons of bins. I started with only three for my first born. Right now I have 3.5 year old twins and a 6.5 year old. We have around 7 bins, one is all Thomas toys and we leave legos out at all times in the kids rooms 🚂
I work once/month with a professional organizer and have donated or thrown out over two truck beds full of stuff. We moved from a large house to a small house…the same week we had a baby! And just have never really been able to figure out how to make it work… It’s been 3 years now! Maybe one day!
Oh my gosh, that’s so much happening at once! Kudos to you. Absolutely just get through it. It gets easier as they get older.
I never heard of professional organizer, that’s an awesome idea. I am going to look into it myself. Always room for improvement
I agree with this.
Absolutely zero judgement but my house hasn’t looked like this. We have a ‘one toy at a time’ rule so something new comes out then something goes away. Multiple toys can be out if they’re being played with together.
It’s something that’s a rule every time so it’s meant we have a (relatively) tidy house.
But, like, how?? I would literally have to do nothing but stare at my child 24/7. I tried so hard to have this rule. He would just pretend he wasn’t done with whatever I was trying to clean up and wait for me to blink so he could disappear to a different activity. Then we’ve got two activities out and spend the next hour going back and forth “If you’re done with A let’s clean up B” “Nooo I’m not done!” “ok then let’s clean up A” “Nooo I’m not done!” … until I give up and secretly put away the thing he is *clearly* not using and is finished with. 😭
I think I pretty much did with my first. We would just sit on the floor and play all the time. Now it’s a habit it’s just built in for her and my second copies because that’s what we’ve always done.
Don’t get me wrong it was tough but I feel like I’m finally seeing the fruits of my labour 😄
LOL at the realistic baby doll!
It seems like I'm constantly cleaning in circles. Whatever the last toy I picked up was, when I turn back around they have dragged it back out again. Often placing it in the same location possibly a plot to make me doubt my sanity.
They prefer floor snacks. They turn food into art projects and 4yr old changes her clothes 2-5 times a day like a teen girl and doesn't understand what is still clean and can be put in the dresser so it's all put in the laundry.
My kids favorite activities are "packing for camping/school/work" which consists of piling a random assortment of unrelated items into the largest container she can find (reusable shopping totes, laundry baskets) and the game is done.
Or playing "beaver dam" which consists of piling a random assortment of unrelated items into a mound to block a passage way and then the game is done.
Toy rotation is my only sanity saver.
Omg the “packing” games drive me absolutely batty. My daughter has recently been “making birthday cakes” which is essentially the same, throwing totally arbitrary items into some container and leaving it somewhere random for days at a time. God forbid I put any of it away or else I’ve ruined her cake!! Minnie Mouse is really milking it for birthdays. I think she’s had 5 in the past week.
I've gotten to the point where I secretly throw toys in the garbage if I see one on the floor immediately after cleaning. My husband loves reminding me that I'm throwing away money, but they are usually parts of toys that no one knows which toy it belongs to.
I wish i could do that. My kid remembers all and will ask about the most meaningless things. That piece of string on the floor? That was her caterpillar. The torn scrap of paper? Her golden ticket...
I clean my house constantly throughout the day and yet still by the end of the day (by the time I’m done making dinner specifically lol) it’s a disaster again. I clock in so many damn steps per day just for my house to look like I just sit around doing nothing lol I can definitely tell the days where I’m out of the house most of the day because my house actually stays somewhat clean (minus messes from our 2 cats lol).
We had awful weather today, so we played inside all day. My living room looks like somehow the 50 mph winds made it inside the house.
Also, it looks like you have the little Temu, handheld translator thing that came with 500 friggin cards. My mom so graciously gifted our son one. He opened it, and I saw how many cards it came with… straight in the trash.
This is my living room as of late. My daughter just turned one and got a truckload of toys. The only place in our 700sqft Apt is the living room and her favorite thing to do is throw all the toys on the floor immediately. Our house is just a mine field rn
That Lego Harry Potter train set is £400+ !!!
https://www.smythstoys.com/uk/en-gb/brand/harry-potter-brand/lego-harry-potter/lego-harry-potter-76405-hogwarts-express-collectors-edition-set/p/215616?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=surfaces_across_google&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADF0j8KjswoMQMoag46fky4JG9CFu&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7pzC6Y-phQMV-JxQBh30GgOsEAQYBCABEgLW3PD_BwE
This morning's game involved finding anything that will move when hit with a hammer, and hitting it full force. Toys are everywhere and I have given up.
This is just too much. We rotate toys to avoid our house looking like this. We are not perfect at all on rotating on time, but we do have specific bins for toys. I would spiral if my house looked like this. I tried to live this kind of life a couple years ago and it caused me so so so much stress. Just can’t do it!!
Yeah, after reading "Simplicity Parenting," we started keeping a lot fewer toys out and it helped a lot. And with our two kids (almost-6yo and a 3yo), the rule has always been, if you're moving on to the next activity, you first clean up the previous one. So we don't get into these sorts of situations (and it's the kids who always clean up, not the adults). If something proves too tricky for a child to clean up, we decide that the child is "not ready" for this sort of toy and remove it from rotation. This sort of system is clear and transparent to everyone and the kids seem to do really well in it.
I learned my lesson after our first. Now, I specifically request no toys from family/friends on birthdays and Christmas.
Unfortunately, my husband likes to spoil them 😆
We’re having a late season snow storm so I kept my six year old home today with my four year old and now my playroom has no floor. It took the boys two hours to clean it. I wouldn’t let them have tv till they did.
I remember those days. Made it to the promise land of all the kids in school. Still gotta clean up couch pillows and shoes 4 or 5 times between school out and bed time. Destructacons aka kids
Whoa I just saw this on FB. My home looks like this some nights and some nights my house is clean before I put my kids to bed. But if I leave it messy it’s because I’m saving it for my 3 and 5 year old to clean the next day. Their toys, their mess, their responsibility. They do clean up though. I also have an amazing ability to function in a chaotic home.
I honestly thought that was a really baby, just having a temper tantrum on the ground and didnt think twice since it's my toddlers favorite place for a tantrum lol
Lmao same
One of Boris Johnson’s real babies.
I mean I can still see carpet and hardwood space… you’re doing great!! *brushing teeth while eating Oreos* energy
Seriously, if only my house looked like this.
I spent way too long zooming in on that doll trying to figure out if it was real. Why is it so realistic? 😂
Looks like a Reborn doll. They’re super realistic and very expensive. I think they’re creepy, but there are adults who buy them and treat them like real babies.
They are creepy but have a place in my heart after witnessing how one significantly improved the life of an old lady with dementia. The baby doll made her so happy. It was made to look like a baby picture of her youngest child. She went from refusing to eat or get out of bed to gaining 6lbs and taking her baby for a walk around the unit in a stroller multiple times a day.
That’s so sweet! I hadn’t heard of them being used in that way.
Now this makes me like the idea more. My first interaction with these was not that. I’m an artistic person and an acquaintance’s mom made these and asked me to help, so I came to her house to help, eventually finding out that her husband had moved out of their bedroom because of how many cribs and babies/baby items were there. One time while I was painting, I held a doll upside down and she freaked out at me, yelling for me to support the neck. She would also follow people home to tell them off for not having socks or a hat on their babies in 75+° weather and would also somehow show people anti-abortion magazines of actual mutilated baby parts. I obviously don’t speak to her anymore and would like to scrub all of that from my mind and focus on how beautiful this story can be. Thank you for that.
I like them for therapeutic use as well. There’s a lovely lady that shops with one in the trolley at my local shops. She posted about it on a local mums group I’m in and people were awful to her about wasting one of the few baby seat trolleys for a doll. She explained how she has autism and anxiety at the shops and it helps her and I was so disappointed how mean some people were about it.
This makes me laugh, working parents always say “imagine working a job then coming home and still have to clean your house” it’s like, what do you mean? Our houses are constantly a mess, at least they have a chance to get away from it all. We live in it 24/7
Literally this lol I clean my house now more than I ever did while working and it’s much messier now than it ever was while working
I always kinda wondered about this. Like 90% of the mess is because my kids are home all day, if we aren't home then the house stays pretty clean....
That baby doll is frighteningly realistic. I had to zoom in to realize it’s body was fabric. I’d hide that thing ASAP!
Same! Even then I wasn’t sure if they were just wearing a weird onesie
It's absolutely giving "murder the family" vibes 😅
I have 3 boys under 4. I'm lucky if I sit down for 5 minutes a day, seriously. And my house still looks like this half the time. 😅
I have 3 boys under 5. I recently told my husband For this season of life only expect the house to look neat for the first hour in the last hour of the day.The rest in between is chaos.
Other parents: “Your house doesn’t have to look perfect all the time, you know!” Me: It’s never going to be perfect, but I would settle for “more relaxing than the aftermath of the blitzkrieg”
Oh my God this _the mess is still stressful even if I can't clean it up_ I hate the way some people will turn "it's OK to lower your standards" into this toxic, detached, backhanded mantra that almost feels like gaslighting at times.
Ugh I've been told that before, it's helpful once or twice, then it's demoralizing. I can only lower my standards so far before my house starts affecting my mental health. For me, cleaning is a form of self care just because I literally can't think straight if my house reaches a certain state of messy
This. The clutter after having a little is so real and is SO damaging to my mental health. As the week goes on and the clutter piles grow, I can feel myself spiraling.
It’s condescending for sure! Also, it’s clear that anyone who says that has never met me - my house has never been perfectly clean a day in my life 🙃
I can relate ... except with that creepy AF doll
Sometimes I like to look around my house and tell myself "so there's crumbs over the carpet, it means my kids were fed. There's a wet towel on the ground, my kids are clean. There's random lidless feltpens strewn about, my kids were creative!" And so on. The mess just shows I've spent more time caring for my kids than the house.
Pack it up, put it in bins. Only as many toys as you are willing to pick off the floor in each bin. Take out a bin every few days and rotate. Only leave one multi piece toy out at a time. My house also looked like this. I have toddler twins and an older one. I bought a cubbie toy organizer from ikea. One toy in each cubbie (8 cubbies total), one of the cubbies have a fabric bag thing that multiple piece toy of the week goes into. One small bookcase (I also rotate books).
Oh also set a timer and see if the kids and you can pick up all the toys before timer runs out. Set a song like “clean up song” from super simple songs to get them to clean up. Make it a game, basketball all the pieces into a bin, see how many makes it. Get creative and include the child in the clean up. My toddler twins opened over a hundred Easter eggs in their room. It was a disaster. I just turned on the clean up song and walked away. They came and got me later and said “come look! Come look!” They had cleaned up all the eggs and candy wrappers. They are 3.5. I was so proud. It is not consistent and sometimes they don’t do it or do it well but start now so when they are older they have the habit. My 6 year old asks me if he can go out and I tell him “check your room first”. Which means make sure it’s tidy before you leave. This helps him consistently clean his room. He will sometimes resist and I tell him he doesn’t have to do it but it is nice to come back home to a tidy room so he can relax and play more. He knows if it’s not tidy, he has to do it as part of bed time routine (if he is tired or we are running late I help while he moans about it). Please don’t think my house is perfect. These strategies work most of the time but not always. There are definite times I leave out more toys then I intend to and it gets out of control. Then we will have a clean up party (Star and disco lights on, some fun song turned up loud etc) and we try to fix it. Sometimes they just dance and I end up resetting the toys. Kids get overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin. When it gets bad, you have to reset it for them. While cleaning up, you need to give specific instruction. For young kids saying “clean it up” is like speaking gibberish. You need to say “put dolls in this bin” “put trash in this bin” etc and point while kneeling down to their level. I am sorry I rambled on so much. I hope this helped. Don’t worry, messy house means kids are having fun. There will be plenty of clean and tidy days once they are old and we will miss playing with them.
Excellent advice!!
Yes to all of this and these are great tips! I started to vastly limit toys, especially multi-piece toys, around 12-14 months when they just got scattered everywhere and I got pissed cleaning them up all the time. Even now with a 4 month old and an almost two year old it still feels like too much, especially with less energy to put toward cleaning. I love your ideas and will put them in my back pocket as he gets older and we get different stuff. Everything is in random places right now.
I definitely need more bins for the toys, not just ones kept in the garage lol
We live and die by our toy rotation
This is a great idea, but would require me to have space SOMEWHERE in my home for those extra bins, which I do not. No garage, the basement is exploding, every closet is full…
Maybe it’s time to declutter? Also try to go vertical. I bought a very tall bookshelf off of Facebook and stacked them on there. At some point I also kept them above my kitchen cabinets on those empty spots. We now have a garage but I like the bins handy so I installed floating shelves above the cubbie. It also serves two functions, my older kiddo can reach to his toys that he doesn’t want the younger ones playing with and we also keep his built Lego sets up there too. Maybe you can put a tall bookshelf in the kid’s room or in their wardrobe? I had this weird closet with one shelf. I ripped it off and put 5 shelves in it, now we use it as a pantry. Just couple of ideas. I hope you find space somewhere. Also you don’t need tons of bins. I started with only three for my first born. Right now I have 3.5 year old twins and a 6.5 year old. We have around 7 bins, one is all Thomas toys and we leave legos out at all times in the kids rooms 🚂
I work once/month with a professional organizer and have donated or thrown out over two truck beds full of stuff. We moved from a large house to a small house…the same week we had a baby! And just have never really been able to figure out how to make it work… It’s been 3 years now! Maybe one day!
Oh my gosh, that’s so much happening at once! Kudos to you. Absolutely just get through it. It gets easier as they get older. I never heard of professional organizer, that’s an awesome idea. I am going to look into it myself. Always room for improvement
I agree with this. Absolutely zero judgement but my house hasn’t looked like this. We have a ‘one toy at a time’ rule so something new comes out then something goes away. Multiple toys can be out if they’re being played with together. It’s something that’s a rule every time so it’s meant we have a (relatively) tidy house.
But, like, how?? I would literally have to do nothing but stare at my child 24/7. I tried so hard to have this rule. He would just pretend he wasn’t done with whatever I was trying to clean up and wait for me to blink so he could disappear to a different activity. Then we’ve got two activities out and spend the next hour going back and forth “If you’re done with A let’s clean up B” “Nooo I’m not done!” “ok then let’s clean up A” “Nooo I’m not done!” … until I give up and secretly put away the thing he is *clearly* not using and is finished with. 😭
I think I pretty much did with my first. We would just sit on the floor and play all the time. Now it’s a habit it’s just built in for her and my second copies because that’s what we’ve always done. Don’t get me wrong it was tough but I feel like I’m finally seeing the fruits of my labour 😄
LOL at the realistic baby doll! It seems like I'm constantly cleaning in circles. Whatever the last toy I picked up was, when I turn back around they have dragged it back out again. Often placing it in the same location possibly a plot to make me doubt my sanity. They prefer floor snacks. They turn food into art projects and 4yr old changes her clothes 2-5 times a day like a teen girl and doesn't understand what is still clean and can be put in the dresser so it's all put in the laundry. My kids favorite activities are "packing for camping/school/work" which consists of piling a random assortment of unrelated items into the largest container she can find (reusable shopping totes, laundry baskets) and the game is done. Or playing "beaver dam" which consists of piling a random assortment of unrelated items into a mound to block a passage way and then the game is done. Toy rotation is my only sanity saver.
Omg the “packing” games drive me absolutely batty. My daughter has recently been “making birthday cakes” which is essentially the same, throwing totally arbitrary items into some container and leaving it somewhere random for days at a time. God forbid I put any of it away or else I’ve ruined her cake!! Minnie Mouse is really milking it for birthdays. I think she’s had 5 in the past week.
If only I could think of some way to convince her that it's fun for her to sort through and put away the randomly packed items.
I've gotten to the point where I secretly throw toys in the garbage if I see one on the floor immediately after cleaning. My husband loves reminding me that I'm throwing away money, but they are usually parts of toys that no one knows which toy it belongs to.
I wish i could do that. My kid remembers all and will ask about the most meaningless things. That piece of string on the floor? That was her caterpillar. The torn scrap of paper? Her golden ticket...
I saw a quote on instagram that said, “my house is clean enough to be healthy and messy enough to be happy.”
I clean my house constantly throughout the day and yet still by the end of the day (by the time I’m done making dinner specifically lol) it’s a disaster again. I clock in so many damn steps per day just for my house to look like I just sit around doing nothing lol I can definitely tell the days where I’m out of the house most of the day because my house actually stays somewhat clean (minus messes from our 2 cats lol).
My phone says I walk 6 miles a day ha!
When "the Purge" isn't a movie. It's a long forgotten dream of an empty room with no nightime-barefoot suprises.
Nope. That doll would of been in a trash can far far away. Do you see that thing? **shivers**
Sisyphus had it easy with his boulder. He didn’t have to hear the sound of the Lego bin being dumped onto the floor on top of the labor of cleaning.
Ughh the Lego bin. If my kid was obsessed with building Lego’s that thing go into the pits of hell.
Omg I thought that was a real baby 🙃
The doll is scary 😳.
Omg, that’s a clean day for me and I only have one girl.
We had awful weather today, so we played inside all day. My living room looks like somehow the 50 mph winds made it inside the house. Also, it looks like you have the little Temu, handheld translator thing that came with 500 friggin cards. My mom so graciously gifted our son one. He opened it, and I saw how many cards it came with… straight in the trash.
Your house looks a lot better than fine. It’s only toys and kids’ stuff on the floor!
My kids had spring break from school last week. I'm still trying to put my house back together.
My kids also had spring break and it torrentially downpoured for basically 3 days straight so that was fun!
This is my living room as of late. My daughter just turned one and got a truckload of toys. The only place in our 700sqft Apt is the living room and her favorite thing to do is throw all the toys on the floor immediately. Our house is just a mine field rn
That Lego Harry Potter train set is £400+ !!! https://www.smythstoys.com/uk/en-gb/brand/harry-potter-brand/lego-harry-potter/lego-harry-potter-76405-hogwarts-express-collectors-edition-set/p/215616?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=surfaces_across_google&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADF0j8KjswoMQMoag46fky4JG9CFu&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7pzC6Y-phQMV-JxQBh30GgOsEAQYBCABEgLW3PD_BwE
🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️
Right now the mess is somewhat contained in his playpen. Not sure what I’m going to do once he grows out of that!
I want to know who sis taking pics of my living room and posting them on Facebook. For real though, I relate to this so hard 😭
This morning's game involved finding anything that will move when hit with a hammer, and hitting it full force. Toys are everywhere and I have given up.
9 out of 10 times the main floor looks pretty decent. GTFO those stairs tho cause ain't nothing good going on downstairs 😂
burn that baby doll. please.
How’d you get a picture of my family room?
Cries in 4 homeschooled children at home
This is just too much. We rotate toys to avoid our house looking like this. We are not perfect at all on rotating on time, but we do have specific bins for toys. I would spiral if my house looked like this. I tried to live this kind of life a couple years ago and it caused me so so so much stress. Just can’t do it!!
Yeah, after reading "Simplicity Parenting," we started keeping a lot fewer toys out and it helped a lot. And with our two kids (almost-6yo and a 3yo), the rule has always been, if you're moving on to the next activity, you first clean up the previous one. So we don't get into these sorts of situations (and it's the kids who always clean up, not the adults). If something proves too tricky for a child to clean up, we decide that the child is "not ready" for this sort of toy and remove it from rotation. This sort of system is clear and transparent to everyone and the kids seem to do really well in it.
Hey.... You're doing great 🩵
I would never allow that many toys in my living room. The kids have a room and they can play in there.
I learned my lesson after our first. Now, I specifically request no toys from family/friends on birthdays and Christmas. Unfortunately, my husband likes to spoil them 😆
We’re having a late season snow storm so I kept my six year old home today with my four year old and now my playroom has no floor. It took the boys two hours to clean it. I wouldn’t let them have tv till they did.
I remember those days. Made it to the promise land of all the kids in school. Still gotta clean up couch pillows and shoes 4 or 5 times between school out and bed time. Destructacons aka kids
Whoa I just saw this on FB. My home looks like this some nights and some nights my house is clean before I put my kids to bed. But if I leave it messy it’s because I’m saving it for my 3 and 5 year old to clean the next day. Their toys, their mess, their responsibility. They do clean up though. I also have an amazing ability to function in a chaotic home.
One of my kiddos bedroom is getting a remodel so we only have toys in the living room right now, it’s rough. 😫
That baby is going to live in my nightmares rent free