Organise 101 : Dealing with toys

If you have children, you will definitely have toys in the house. Toys are cute. They are colourful and they produce cute sounds too. But they MIGRATE. They move from the kid's room to our bedroom, to the living room, then to the kitchen, outside - basically anywhere your children go.

O R G A N I S E  1 0 1   |  t o y s

by garlicandbutter

As far as I can remember, I rarely buy any toys for my children (once or twice). There are already a lot of hand-me-downs from my nephew and my cousin, free toys from the Golden Arch and birthday presents. And they ended up in FOUR HUGE containers in our house. Not one, not two, but four. That was when I decided to do a major toy clean out.

Ask these questions before you embark in the MAJOR TOY CLEAN OUT DAY. Taken from Absolute Organized by Debbie Lillard.

Where are you going to keep the toys?

Kids bedroom? Playroom? Family hall? In the closet? Half here-half there?

Me : Hobby area

What are you going to use to keep them organised?

Toy box? Clear container with wheel? Toy shelves? Basket? Soft toys hammock? Boxes with lid? Plastic bag?

Me : Clear container with lid and wheel

This is the first step to get the toys back to the right place after their migration.

Then comes the major toy clean out day. Go through the toys with your children so they know what toys are still in their possession and which will not. 

This is our exciting day cleaning out the toys.

I have prepared two laundry baskets for toys that they want to keep (NAK) and another one is to be donated to our less fortunate neighbour (DERMA). I also prepare two boxes for the broken ones (BUANG).

Nabil was the only one who helped me sorting out the toys....

...because his brothers suddenly decided to play. A good thing about toy clean out is they found toys that they forgot they had and it is as good as getting new toys.

After a while, Nabil decided to play together with his brothers. Kids... I asked them whenever I want to put something in DERMA pile or toss something into BUANG box. 

Along the process, I found my old toys. I keep these since I was 7 or 8 years old (And this year Nabil will turns 8 - how time flies).

At the end of the day, we have a good condition toys in one pile.

Ruined and broken toys with sharp edges to be thrown away.

I washed each pieces with soapy water, rinse and wipe it dry.

I threw these into the washing machine and they came out clean and happy. The blue elephant is mine.

Later that afternoon, I put everything into a huge transparent container and surprisingly, from four containers of toys, we ended up with ONE. It has wheels - easy for the kids to move it around.

After the clean out, I remind the kids to put the toys into the container after they done playing. I will pick up any toys lying on the floor and throw it away (actually I hide it in my room). Just to teach them a lesson. So far it worked.