by Eileen Roth
How to Be a Senior Toy Manager
If you’ve been there, you know: Toy management is serious business. Those who do manage toys well ought to receive an honorable degree, acknowledging the advanced techniques required to keep order between fun-loving young souls and the adults who love to lavish them with gifts. The good news is that once you master the three key toy-management principles, you can keep your playroom and its players on track without panicking every time the grand-parents show up with presents.
The three steps to advanced toy management are
1. Purge: In today’s world, many kids are in total toy overload. To adults, toys can come to represent both love and money spent, and tossing toys may be even harder for mom than daughter. But as sentimental as each gift from loving parents, doting grandparents, and adoring aunts and uncles may be, kids outgrow toys quickly and can only play with so many current favorites at once. Keeping extra or obsolete toys encourages bad habits and wastes space — which itself is a critical part of the creativity equation. So take the plunge. Purge your playroom today.
Depending upon your children’s ages and the toys involved, you may choose to approach the task with each child individually, or do the whole family in one fell swoop. Sort toys and games by type, directing the cast-offs to trash, donation, and garage sale piles as you go.
Purging your playroom can be approached gently. Never make children get rid of toys before they’re ready, but do look for staged compromises that respect a child’s feelings while also helping children form a healthy relationship with material things.
2. Contain: Enclosing toys in containers keeps them from becoming clutter and accustoms kids to looking for things in their place and putting their toys back in the appropriate container later. Match the container to the type of toy and age of the users. Colored open crates can hold large toys for small toddlers. Use a different color for each type of toy — blocks, cars, dolls, animals. Clear, pullout drawers suit smaller items and make seeing what’s inside easy at play and cleanup time. Preschoolers love ’em. Closed wicker baskets or chests are an attractive way to house dolls and doll clothes. Containers with tight-fitting lids keep smaller children out of older children’s toys, so that Judy can keep her beloved doll accessories in the playroom without worrying that little Phillip may stop by and swallow a tiny high-heeled shoe.
Arrange your containers in cabinets or on wall shelves, keeping crayons, board games, and craft supplies up high and toddler-friendly toys closer to the floor.
Go for closed: Look for full backs and sides on all of your playroom containers and shelving. Small toys and game and puzzle pieces have a way of slipping through cracks into irretrievable spots.
3. Rotate: Even after your purge, you’ll probably have more toys than your children can play with at once. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so prolong the appeal of toys and games by rotating your active stock. To establish a toy rotation, divide each toy type into a few different groups, so that the sum of one group from each type will leave your playroom well-stocked. Box up the remaining groups by set, label each “Toy rotation #___”, and store in the basement or attic far from inquiring eyes.
When your kids start to tire of the playroom repertoire, it’s time for the big switcheroo. You can make a big deal of the switch, enlisting kids to pack up old toys before bringing on the new batch, or make the change yourself quietly one night. Surprise! Rotations also provide a good time to trim down the collection. Are all the toys you’ll pack up still on the “A” list? Toss or donate the C’s through Z’s — but remember that a little time away can reestablish the luster of many a B.
The doll empire: What you can skim off the top
Perhaps the biggest toy disposal we ever pulled off was my daughters’ extensive doll collection, and we didn’t get it all the first time. We’re talking about 15 to 20 dolls, a two-story house, a couple of canopy beds, complete dining and living room sets, a backyard barbecue, bathroom accessories, and tons of outfits — probably a thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise when bought new. Though neither of the girls had played dolls in a year, one of them wasn’t quite ready to let it all go. I helped her decide to keep one or two dolls and a few outfits apiece. This was fine with her, and a few years later the remaining dolls went too.
Our total garage sale take for the thousand-dollar doll empire? About $100, plus priceless space and the knowledge that we were making its new owners very happy. Garage sales won’t make you rich, but they offer your children an education in commerce and provide some additional funds for fun. Why not use the proceeds for a family outing to a theme park, concert, or play? Investing them in the college fund may be thrifty, but won’t provide an immediate reward to help show your kids that clutter-free living is good.
If you choose to donate, explain to your children that some kids aren’t as lucky as they are, and giving extra toys to charity is a way of sharing happiness while still leaving plenty to play with. You’re never too young to get in the habit of giving.
No cutting corners: Storing games
One nice thing about games is that they come in their own box, but boy, do those boxes break fast, especially the corners. Mend breaks with masking tape applied to the inside of the box, which can keep the box looking nice and improve your chances of getting the game out and put away without pieces all over the floor.
Speaking of pieces, protect your peace of mind by zipping them into resealable bags. This makes cleanup far easier when the box takes a tumble. Use the slide type of closure for easy access to younger kids’ games and a pressure closure for those you might want to keep little ones out of.
Some games have paper books that are necessary to play the game. If the game’s a family favorite, extend the life of the book by covering the pages with clear contact paper.
Learn to read while you play with labels
Even toy retrieval can become a reading experience when you label toy containers with their contents. Tommy may not know the word “cars” on sight, but show him that his toy hot rod goes in the drawer with those four letters on the front and watch his cognitive wheels start to turn.
Make the reading lesson easier by using both upper and lowercase letters in your labels. Small letters, with their distinct shapes and heights, are easier to recognize than all caps. I recommend a label maker, which is relatively cheap (less than $50), for the job and the resulting labels look much better than masking tape or a curling computer label, and they’re washable. With your help, your preschoolers may like punching out a label or two for themselves.
Getting it together: Puzzles
You can never put all the pieces of a puzzle together if some have gone missing, so use a system to keep them in their place:
As soon as you bring a puzzle home, mark the back of each piece with the puzzle’s name or a number, for example, “Farmhouse” or “23.” If you use a number code, write the number on the puzzle box. Now if a piece pops up somewhere else, you know just where to put the piece back.
Put puzzle pieces into a resealable bag inside the box to prevent spills.
Devote a card or snack table to the puzzle for as long as you work on it. Place the table in a corner to keep it from getting knocked over or interfering with other activities.
The Reading Center: Children’s Books
Playrooms are often freewheeling places — not the best environment for a reading center, so I generally recommend keeping most children’s books in bedrooms or the library or family room. However, the playroom is the right room for activity, art, and craft books, and you may put the rest of your collection here if you don’t have space elsewhere or if the playroom is your prime reading spot. Depending upon how many books you have, use a small freestanding bookcase or larger wall unit to put them into place. If you keep reading books here, put older children’s books higher up so younger siblings won’t access and destroy them, and devote the lower shelves to toddler favorites. Shelve books by like catego
ry: activity, reference, fiction or stories, fairy tales, religious books, and so on. See Chapter 9 for more on categorizing and shelving a library.
Saving for a sentimental journey
Popular toys change at the speed of light. My girls grew up with toys that hadn’t been invented in my day and contemporary kids can’t even recognize. As a current mom of college students, I’m unfamiliar with today’s toys. My point: Many toys are trendy, and it’s generally best to get rid of them as they pass out of the spotlight.
Still, some toys are evergreens for educational or sentimental reasons, and to keep a few for the grandchildren is okay. I chose three boxes to hang onto from my children’s younger days, filled with some dolls, a set of 2-inch-high animal families that’s been off the market for years, and basic building blocks that can enable the construction of any dream, from houses to airports, fire stations, and entire towns. The dolls may be the most lasting reminder of my limited skills as a seamstress. I labored over making them new outfits, and hoped that someday my grandchildren may enjoy playing with their mothers’ dolls and laughing at their grandmother’s stitches. As for the mini animals, when my girls were young there was a television show that taught life lessons through families of rabbits, bears, and raccoons. I made up a lot of stories voiced through the mouths of these guys, and plan to tell new ones the soonest chance I get.
So my sentimental savers are destined to be grandma’s toys, a select and special few that meet my own needs while leaving my children the space to create their own memories with a new generation. When it comes to sentiment, selectivity is key.
The Art of Organizing Arts ’n’ Crafts
Setting up an arts and crafts area for kids is like arranging an adult workshop or hobby area, while accounting for safety issues and a lot more messes. See Chapter 12 for general organizational principles.
First, create the art center. Remind yourself that if there’s a nice carpet on the floor, you may want to recarpet with indoor/outdoor material, use a drop cloth, or relegate activities involving clay, paints, markers, or glue to the kitchen. Keep all messy supplies in a childproof cabinet closest to their use.
If you don’t have a mess-proof floor in the art center or want to double up your cooking with supervising an arts-and-craft session, set up your craft station in the kitchen, storing supplies in a high or locked cabinet and using the kitchen table for a worktable. You can knock off a stew or sauce while they stamp, paint, or glue, and everyone can have something to show at the end.
By the way, buy washable markers, paints, and glue while kids are young enough to consider the world and the walls their canvas. For a worktable in the playroom, a kitchen cast-off fills the bill. Laminated tops are easiest to clean up, while wood may get wrecked and stained by paints and crayons, but maybe you don’t care.
Next, stock your supplies. As always, art supplies can be accessible close to the worktable, with like items together and everything contained in dividers or other containers in drawers or on shelves. An old dresser may be put to use for craft supply storage. Playrooms have lots of craft stuff and art supplies, so here are some ways to consolidate and store all of those supplies for those future creations:
Crayons: Save new, intact boxes of crayons for school and collect the rest in a covered plastic box or metal tin at home. Metal won’t get as marked up as plastic.
Pencils, pens, markers, scissors: Use narrow plastic divider trays, preferably inside a drawer to prevent a spill.
Rubber stamps: Store them in their original cases or spread on a piece of paper. Stamping the paper with the design can help you find the stamp you want.
Paints: Stack watercolors in their own containers, organize others into plastic trays.
Glues: Group together in a plastic tray.
Paper: If you have several types (white, construction, drawing, and so on), use an office sort tray.
Beads: Corral beads into containers specially designed to separate them by type.
Attention kids and parents everywhere: Crayons aren’t used up just because you wore them down to the paper. Buy a crayon sharpener to keep a slim tip on your crayons and enjoy their full lifespan. Got more crayons than you can use? Day care centers are always happy for the donation.
Cleaning up your act
The playroom may be the space with the shortest organizational attention span in the house. Whatever the project or game, every session here needs to routinely end with cleanup time. From the moment your children can walk, show them not to walk out of the room until everything is put away. The payoff? Fun and easy play tomorrow, without a mess to wade through on the way.
Kid-friendly ways to clean up your act include:
Clean up with them when the kids are young.
Invite older children to think up better ways to straighten up and systematize the playroom. Throw down the gauntlet anew every year.
Turn on special cleanup music and challenge everyone to be done by the time the song is over.
Set a good example yourself in other areas of the house. Getting organized in the playroom can make fun come naturally for all —so forget your excuses and get playing with everything in its place!
Rec Room and Playroom Combo: All-Ages Fun!
We all need to play, and doubling up the playroom as a recreation and relaxation room for teenagers and adults can be a boon to family togetherness — if you have the space to let everyone do their thing. Keep centers in mind so that you can cohabitate playfully and peacefully. Add an adult sitting area with a couch, some comfy chairs, and perhaps a media center and/or library. Big games such as pool or ping-pong can go into their own game center away from the sitting area so the action doesn’t detract from anyone’s relaxation factor. Point the couch and chairs toward the kids’ play areas, and you can keep a watchful eye while you enjoy your book or show.
Part III
Organizing Storage Spaces and Other Secret Places
In this part . . .
T he propensity for “Out of sight, out of mind,” as the saying goes, is sure to drive you out of your mind when you’re scouring the basement for a special holiday serving dish and company is on the way. Part III can help you put everything away in secret spaces, so storage is no longer synonymous with stress. You may even discover that storing more is sometimes less. So get busy in the basement! Get going in the garage! If you follow these guidelines, you may even have room for the car.
Chapter 11
Lightening Your Load: The Laundry and Utility Room
In This Chapter
Preventing nothing-to-wear mornings
Rising above piles with savvy sorting secrets
How to shrink anything — or not
Clutter-taming caddies and drying racks
Setting up a mess-free mudroom
A ir the dirty laundry: You probably spend far more time than you like in an overheated room that smells like lint in a losing battle to keep your closets stocked with clean clothes. How can you ever win?
Weary washers of the world take heart. Getting organized in the laundry room can take a big load off your mind and lighten your burden of chores. Whether you have the luxury of your very own laundry room (bet you never thought of it that way), share a laundry room with fellow apartment dwellers, or lug your duds to the public Laundromat, a lean-and-mean approach to keeping your clothes clean can enhance both your look and your life.
The laundry room is a place for making things clean, so put everything into P-L-A-C-E by applying those five organizing principles.
Purge: Toss out old laundry supplies; bent, misshapen, or excess hangers; worn or torn dust rags; and any dried-up or old craft or holiday supplies in your utility center. If you have return/repair items you haven’t dealt with in a year, let them go now.
Like with like: Put laundry supplies together by type above, next to, or between the machines, right where you use them.
Access: Keep hampers in bedroom closets to collect
dirty laundry at the source. In the laundry room, create a sorting center, drying center, ironing center, and utility center to complete each task in one spot.
Contain: Keep laundry supplies in cabinets or shelving units near the machines. Place the ironing tools in an organizer on the wall or door. Put craft supplies in clear containers and label them for easy access.
Evaluate: Do dirty clothes easily make their way into the right load? Can you reach all the laundry supplies while standing at the machine? Can you sort clean clothes without taking a step? Is getting dirty clothes in and clean clothes out of the laundry and helping with a weekly load easy for household members? Does working in this room make you feel like a paragon of efficiency, or an underpaid drudge?
Doing the Laundry Where You Live
Most of us don’t have a choice in the matter, but if you do here’s my maxim: Do the laundry where you live. Whoever thought of putting laundry rooms in the basement, two floors away from where we take off dirty clothes and put on clean ones, was clearly unacquainted with the principle of fingertip management. The closer you can locate the laundry to your bedrooms the better, so you who have first- or second-floor facilities can count yourselves blessed. The rest of you, whether descending to the basement or heading out of the house, can consider it extra calories burned or a social break.