A Fresh Perspective

This Saturday while Mark was away for a few hours fixing up a friend's house, I got The Urge to organize the boys' closets. I've learned that when this Urge comes on, I just have to take advantage of it because it's fleeting - when I have The Urge, my work goes quickly and I enjoy it.  When I try to organize without The Urge, it's drudgery.


So, I put Cars on the TV, armed the boys with snacks, and got to work.  I cleared out some old toys and outgrown clothing, moved some furniture around, and reorganized toys. What resulted was an impromptu form of toy-rotation.  If you're not familiar with this concept, toy rotation involves keeping a small number of toys out for play and storing the rest.  This way children become more interested with a small number of toys, and when they lose interest after a few weeks, you put them away and bring out the stored toys, and Voila!, new interest in old toys!  


Instead of storing toys away as in traditional toy rotation (which I've found to be more work that it's worth), I simply moved toy bins around from room to room. I moved the toys from the boys' room into the living room, and visa versa.  Amazingly, Tommy gained new interest in his train set that was untouched for weeks, simply because I moved it to a new room.  He played with it all day Saturday and all Sunday morning, until we had to pry him away to go to the playground and then have lunch with grandparents.