Toys, toys EVERYWHERE!

Not anymore!

You ever feel like you are picking up the same things like 400-thousand times per day?! That's how it is at my house. First of all, we have WAY TOO MANY toys. Way too much everything actually. Too much clutter everywhere. Well it drives me crazy and I just get exhausted trying to deal with it everyday. Just how many bouncy balls do we need, really? For years I have been organizing them into their own separate "bouncy ball bin", but come on - WHY? Why do we need all of these? Just so I can pick them up over and over and over again?! I can have all the toys picked up and the family room looking half way decent 10 minutes before Roger gets home from work but when he walks thru the door it looks like a bomb just went off again.

There are so many areas that need tackling and yesterday I decided to do something about it. To me it made sense to start with the toys because maybe after I dealt with that it would give me some free time to do the other areas. I dumped every single cubby, container, bin, box, and loose toy I could find (except a few) and put them into a super HUGE black plastic yard waste bag. It is huge. I think this bag could substitute for Santa's big black bag and provide toys for every child around the world! My plan was to someday (when Patrick is not around) take it outside and get 3 bins and for every one we put in the keep pile, put 3 in the give away pile. Then of course there would be the throw out pile for broken things. You see this done on those organizational shows. Why don't they ever show up at my house? I would be so embarrassed to be on tv though. Anyway... now that all the stuff is in the bag - I just want to take it to the dump. Terrible Mom? Maybe! Argggh. I don't know - probably.

I think want to do this with the rest of the house too. Just simplify... cut down... make things easier. I remember before I had children I said I would never buy that many toys... I wanted my kids to have a few special things they cherished and actually played with. Hmmm - guess I got WAY out of control. We all have way too much. Too many choices in the grocery store (check out the cereal aisle!), too many pictures. Ok I have like a gazillion digital pictures that I have never printed out - there are so many I can never decide which ones to print and which ones to delete (delete?, could I really do that?!! It freaks me out to even think about it). But just think - if we didn't have all this junk, how much easier life would be. I could actually maybe be out there enjoying my life instead of being overwhelmed by all this madness.

Gotta go, so much more to do!