Maybe you noticed a new little goody on my sidebar there. I just signed up as a Mom-bassador with a new website called Fishful Thinking. It's sponsored by Pepperidge Farm who are the goldfish cracker people and it's all about optimism and using positive thinking to raise our children.
I know this is a blog about cleaning and organizing, but I think you need to have a certain amount of optimism to be able to make the kinds of changes we are trying to accomplish. We are definitely trying to make positive changes and improvements to our lives and our homes and I think a positive attitude can be a big help with that. Plus, I think most of us have kids as well and this is a great resource for raising kids. There are a ton of great articles, ideas and quizzes on there, plus there is a whole kid's section of the website that has games and activities for your kids to play.
Go ahead and click on the little fishy over there to go and check out the site. I think you'll really enjoy it.
3/23/09
3/22/09
Photo Storage and Organization
My husband and son are at a father-son campout this weekend, so I just devoted my entire day - literally about 10 hours straight to organizing our photos. Now normally, I wouldn't advise a client to tackle such a large and time-consuming project. But I know myself and my schedule and believe me, large blocks of spare time are a pretty rare thing in my life. And I also know that with a semi-unpleasant job like this, my best bet is to do it in one large chunk because otherwise I can let a project like this drag out for weeks.
In my house, photos and other personal mementos are probably my largest source of clutter. I'm pretty sentimental and over the years I have amassed a pretty extensive collection of "stuff". Not only pictures, but craft items my mother made for me and my children, clothes that have particular significance, birth announcements and certificates for variance achievements, report cards, etc.
It's a LOT of stuff and it takes up a fair amount of space in my house. But because a lot of it has meaning to me, I am willing to forgo other types of clutter to make room for it. I have it all in a large cedar chest that my mother bought me when I was in college and I have three large Rubbermaid tubs that fit neatly into the closets in several rooms. So, even though it is technically clutter, it is fairly neat and pretty organized clutter.
However, I have decided to take it a step further. I like to scrapbook and I am on the verge of digging into digital scrapbooking, so I need my pictures converted to digital format for scrapbooking. Plus I am nervous something could happen to ruin all these special memories for me, so I have found a place that converts them to digital images on CD. It's not a bad deal. You send them a box of approximately 1,000 photos, sorted by size and organized the way you want them, and for $50 they scan them and send them back to you on CD. The place is called Scanmyphotos.com and they're based in Irvine, CA. That's important because some of these places send your pictures off to India or China for scanning and that makes me nervous.
Anyway, that sounded like a pretty good option at about 9:00 this morning. The problem is that I think I've got a lot more than 1,000 photos. I haven't counted yet, but I'll bet it's in the neighborhood of 5,000! Yikes! I don't know if I'm up for spending that kind of money to get all those pictures scanned. We'll see when I'm all done and have a chance to count the photos. I may have to pick and choose and only scan my most favorite ones. Plus I'm not sure what to do with them once they're scanned. 1,000 photos is a lot more than my poor computer can handle. I'd have to find some kind of an on-line picture storing and organizing place. Sounds like I need a bit more research.
But in the meantime, I am definitely accomplishing something. I got all of our oldest pictures out of those old-style magnetic albums that were ruining them. That was a heck of a job right there, I'll tell you! I've also gotten all the old pictures out of their individual envelopes and gotten them all sorted by size if I do decide to scan them. And I've weeded out all the negatives and thrown away all the paper envelopes that were taking up a lot of room. Yes, I hear you gasp, but I know perfectly well that I'd never go back and go to all the trouble of figuring out negatives to get reprints of anything made from them. And besides, the last thing I need is MORE pictures, so I felt comfortable in decluttering them. Duplicates too! Lord in heaven, who ever came up with that particular marketing scheme?
I've also made some progress in getting some of the larger stuff organized - pictures in larger frames, report cards, envelopes of the kid's school pictures. I'm hoping that by the time I'm done, I may be able to eliminate one of the Rubbermaid tubs. Then I just need to figure out what to do with the actual pictures. I'm torn between keeping them in those shoebox-style photo boxes, or putting them into large photo albums, the kind with slip-in sleeves. The boxes hold more, but they're easier to use for scrapbooking when you can see them all laid out in the flat albums.
This is one instance where I could use some good advice. What great strategies to you have for keeping track of your pictures and keeping them organized?
I'm participating in the Photo Storage challenge over at Organizing Junkie. Click the link to pop over and find more ideas on photo storage.
In my house, photos and other personal mementos are probably my largest source of clutter. I'm pretty sentimental and over the years I have amassed a pretty extensive collection of "stuff". Not only pictures, but craft items my mother made for me and my children, clothes that have particular significance, birth announcements and certificates for variance achievements, report cards, etc.
It's a LOT of stuff and it takes up a fair amount of space in my house. But because a lot of it has meaning to me, I am willing to forgo other types of clutter to make room for it. I have it all in a large cedar chest that my mother bought me when I was in college and I have three large Rubbermaid tubs that fit neatly into the closets in several rooms. So, even though it is technically clutter, it is fairly neat and pretty organized clutter.
However, I have decided to take it a step further. I like to scrapbook and I am on the verge of digging into digital scrapbooking, so I need my pictures converted to digital format for scrapbooking. Plus I am nervous something could happen to ruin all these special memories for me, so I have found a place that converts them to digital images on CD. It's not a bad deal. You send them a box of approximately 1,000 photos, sorted by size and organized the way you want them, and for $50 they scan them and send them back to you on CD. The place is called Scanmyphotos.com and they're based in Irvine, CA. That's important because some of these places send your pictures off to India or China for scanning and that makes me nervous.
Anyway, that sounded like a pretty good option at about 9:00 this morning. The problem is that I think I've got a lot more than 1,000 photos. I haven't counted yet, but I'll bet it's in the neighborhood of 5,000! Yikes! I don't know if I'm up for spending that kind of money to get all those pictures scanned. We'll see when I'm all done and have a chance to count the photos. I may have to pick and choose and only scan my most favorite ones. Plus I'm not sure what to do with them once they're scanned. 1,000 photos is a lot more than my poor computer can handle. I'd have to find some kind of an on-line picture storing and organizing place. Sounds like I need a bit more research.
But in the meantime, I am definitely accomplishing something. I got all of our oldest pictures out of those old-style magnetic albums that were ruining them. That was a heck of a job right there, I'll tell you! I've also gotten all the old pictures out of their individual envelopes and gotten them all sorted by size if I do decide to scan them. And I've weeded out all the negatives and thrown away all the paper envelopes that were taking up a lot of room. Yes, I hear you gasp, but I know perfectly well that I'd never go back and go to all the trouble of figuring out negatives to get reprints of anything made from them. And besides, the last thing I need is MORE pictures, so I felt comfortable in decluttering them. Duplicates too! Lord in heaven, who ever came up with that particular marketing scheme?
I've also made some progress in getting some of the larger stuff organized - pictures in larger frames, report cards, envelopes of the kid's school pictures. I'm hoping that by the time I'm done, I may be able to eliminate one of the Rubbermaid tubs. Then I just need to figure out what to do with the actual pictures. I'm torn between keeping them in those shoebox-style photo boxes, or putting them into large photo albums, the kind with slip-in sleeves. The boxes hold more, but they're easier to use for scrapbooking when you can see them all laid out in the flat albums.
This is one instance where I could use some good advice. What great strategies to you have for keeping track of your pictures and keeping them organized?
I'm participating in the Photo Storage challenge over at Organizing Junkie. Click the link to pop over and find more ideas on photo storage.
3/15/09
Handy Tip for Transitioning Seasonal Clothes
You guys know that I always share great tips with you when I run across them. Here is a great solution I found on a new blog I've found called MeckMom.com. I think this is brilliant and it works great for both kid's clothes and your own clothes and fits in very nicely with my active/inactive storage concept, so click HERE to pop over and see. Be sure and leave MeckMom a nice comment for sharing such a lovely tip with us.
3/14/09
Organizing Your Kids - Part 2
As the mom of two ADHD kids, I've had to learn to think on my feet when it comes to getting them moving in the morning. When Matt was younger, mornings used to be my daily nightmare. It was mostly about herding him around, yelling at him, and raising my blood pressure thinking he was going to be late for school every single day. Needless to say, it caused both of us to start our day off on totally the wrong foot.
After some trial and error and reading a number of good books, I decided to revamp our whole morning routine. It worked wonders with Matt and I have been able to carry that same strategy along with Blake. Now our mornings are usually pretty great - well, probably 90% of the time and that ain't too bad!
Here are some of the fixes I put in place.
- Minimize distractions. No cartoons, video games, or even radio, ever. ADHD kids just cannot split their focus between two different activities and really neither can I. Whenever the TV is on, it's like a magnet and it draws everyone in the house right to it, even if there's nothing interesting on. If I find him drawn to books or toys in his room, I will even have him get dressed in a bathroom or the laundry room where there aren't any distractions clamoring for his attention.
- Set a wake up time and stick to it. This just makes it easier on your body if it knows you have to get up at a specific time. For Blake it is 6:50 (his choice). Since he goes to bed at 9:00 most nights, that gives him enough sleep to function and he likes getting up that early on weekends to watch cartoons. In fact, he insists on it when I would prefer to have him sleep in a bit later, but he's one of those morning kids.
- This also makes it easy to set benchmark times. For instance, they should be dressed by ___ time, lunch made by ___ time, and ready to go out the door by ___ time. Sometimes it helps to have an extra alarm clock in the kitchen to give them a warning 20-30 minutes before they have to leave. Then they know if they are running behind. (I do this for myself sometimes too!)
- Make kids responsible for getting themselves up in the morning. If you make yourself responsible for waking them up, then you get into the "sneaking back into bed" game and that is just no fun. It just turns into a power struggle and a frustration. Even a six year old can work an alarm clock and they like the feeling of responsibility it gives them.
- If you have a kid who is hard to wake up, get an alarm clock with a very loud alarm and put it across the room from him. If nothing else, "the call of nature" should get to him once he is up and moving around. That's why you put the alarm clear across the room. (For Matt, I got him a "Clocky" which is an alarm clock on wheels. If he doesn't shut it off, it jumps off his dresser and runs around the room beeping like mad - drives the cats absolutely crazy!)
- As a last resort, use a squirt gun. He might get mad, but he will realize you mean business about getting his butt out of bed in the morning. Or if you don't want to use the tough love approach, offer hot chocolate or some other treat on the mornings he is successful in getting himself up at the appointed time. It may take a while, but it's important that kids learn to take responsibility for themselves.
- Get your morning routine set in stone. That is the only way these kids can remember to do everything they need to do is if they do exactly the same things every morning in exactly the same order. Here is our routine:
- Get up 6:50
- Make bed
- Get dressed
- Brush teeth and comb hair (All by 7:15)
- Make lunch
- Get backpack ready - by 7:30
- Eat breakfast
- Then there is usually some extra time to finish up homework, do extra reading, practice the piano, or even watch a little TV (as a special treat) before the carpool comes to pick him up.
Yes, I can hear you now, he's brushing his teeth first and then eating his breakfast, instead of vice versa. However, having the breakfast last on the list is absolutely the KEY to the whole thing. That way if he does have a rough morning, I can toss him a piece of toast and shoo him out the door. Obviously, I'm not going to make him go hungry, but if he's a little bit hungry by lunchtime, that's probably a good motivator for him to be better organized the next day.
This way, he suffers for his lack of focus and not me, because I'm not frantically running around trying to find shoes and backpacks and gloves at the last minute. Instead, he's the crazy guy running around trying to grab a bite to eat with the pressure of the carpool honking in the driveway. That's a very good natural consequence and it works very well as a motivator.
After some trial and error and reading a number of good books, I decided to revamp our whole morning routine. It worked wonders with Matt and I have been able to carry that same strategy along with Blake. Now our mornings are usually pretty great - well, probably 90% of the time and that ain't too bad!
Here are some of the fixes I put in place.
- Minimize distractions. No cartoons, video games, or even radio, ever. ADHD kids just cannot split their focus between two different activities and really neither can I. Whenever the TV is on, it's like a magnet and it draws everyone in the house right to it, even if there's nothing interesting on. If I find him drawn to books or toys in his room, I will even have him get dressed in a bathroom or the laundry room where there aren't any distractions clamoring for his attention.
- Set a wake up time and stick to it. This just makes it easier on your body if it knows you have to get up at a specific time. For Blake it is 6:50 (his choice). Since he goes to bed at 9:00 most nights, that gives him enough sleep to function and he likes getting up that early on weekends to watch cartoons. In fact, he insists on it when I would prefer to have him sleep in a bit later, but he's one of those morning kids.
- This also makes it easy to set benchmark times. For instance, they should be dressed by ___ time, lunch made by ___ time, and ready to go out the door by ___ time. Sometimes it helps to have an extra alarm clock in the kitchen to give them a warning 20-30 minutes before they have to leave. Then they know if they are running behind. (I do this for myself sometimes too!)
- Make kids responsible for getting themselves up in the morning. If you make yourself responsible for waking them up, then you get into the "sneaking back into bed" game and that is just no fun. It just turns into a power struggle and a frustration. Even a six year old can work an alarm clock and they like the feeling of responsibility it gives them.
- If you have a kid who is hard to wake up, get an alarm clock with a very loud alarm and put it across the room from him. If nothing else, "the call of nature" should get to him once he is up and moving around. That's why you put the alarm clear across the room. (For Matt, I got him a "Clocky" which is an alarm clock on wheels. If he doesn't shut it off, it jumps off his dresser and runs around the room beeping like mad - drives the cats absolutely crazy!)
- As a last resort, use a squirt gun. He might get mad, but he will realize you mean business about getting his butt out of bed in the morning. Or if you don't want to use the tough love approach, offer hot chocolate or some other treat on the mornings he is successful in getting himself up at the appointed time. It may take a while, but it's important that kids learn to take responsibility for themselves.
- Get your morning routine set in stone. That is the only way these kids can remember to do everything they need to do is if they do exactly the same things every morning in exactly the same order. Here is our routine:
- Get up 6:50
- Make bed
- Get dressed
- Brush teeth and comb hair (All by 7:15)
- Make lunch
- Get backpack ready - by 7:30
- Eat breakfast
- Then there is usually some extra time to finish up homework, do extra reading, practice the piano, or even watch a little TV (as a special treat) before the carpool comes to pick him up.
Yes, I can hear you now, he's brushing his teeth first and then eating his breakfast, instead of vice versa. However, having the breakfast last on the list is absolutely the KEY to the whole thing. That way if he does have a rough morning, I can toss him a piece of toast and shoo him out the door. Obviously, I'm not going to make him go hungry, but if he's a little bit hungry by lunchtime, that's probably a good motivator for him to be better organized the next day.
This way, he suffers for his lack of focus and not me, because I'm not frantically running around trying to find shoes and backpacks and gloves at the last minute. Instead, he's the crazy guy running around trying to grab a bite to eat with the pressure of the carpool honking in the driveway. That's a very good natural consequence and it works very well as a motivator.
3/12/09
Organizing your Kids Part I
I know this is supposed to be a blog about organizing your house, but hey, your kids LIVE in your house so you might as well organize them too while you're at it. I'm sure their future wives or husbands will bless you for it and it might help with your sanity as well.
Launch Pad
I think a launch pad is an essential part of kid wrangling. What is a launch pad, you ask? Well, it can be just about anything - a hook, a shelf, a bulletin board, or even a chair. What you need is a specific place to keep their bookbag, coat, lunch box, and whatever other stuff that needs to go to school with them. Then whenever they have a homework assignment, or a permission slip, or a school book that needs to go with them, you put it in the launch pad and they have a pretty good chance of remembering it. Note that this tip works well for parents too!
Homework Station
This year, we started something new in addition to the launch pad. I set up a homework station - just a little plastic organizer with a collection of file folders for completed assignments, homework in progress, and papers from the school that I need to read. This really helps with getting the papers out of the bookbag, but not letting them get scattered all over my kitchen. We also incorporated extra paper, pencils and other items so he can do his homework at the kitchen table where we can supervise him.
Chore Checklist
We also started a new checklist concept this year. My son has ADHD so getting him into daily routines and patterns is extremely important. But as the old saying goes - you can lead a boy to college, but you can't make him think (or something like that!). So I sat down and thought about all the things I wanted him to do in a day - make his bed, wear clean clothes, take a shower, do his homework, practice his instrument, etc. I put them all on a checklist and put spaces for every day of the week. As he does every item every day (hopefully!), he checks it off the list and then keeps count of his check marks.
However, I needed to create some motivation for him to want to use the check list every day. So, what does every 10 year old boy want? Video games. And money. So we decided that he could not play video games until a certain number of items were checked off his list. If he got at least 13 out of the 17 items completed, he could earn up to an hour of video game time and he got a dollar of his allowance. If he got at least 15 of the 17 items done, he earned a fifty cent bonus and a bit more video time. It hasn't been a perfect system and we've refined it a bit here and there, but on the whole, it's worked better than anything else we've tried.
Room Organization
Kid's rooms can sometimes be a nightmare. I know mine always were. One thing that helps is to really cut back on the amount of stuff they have to deal with. Several years back, I started banning toys from the bedrooms and that was the best decision I ever made. The only things I allow them to have in their rooms are clothes, books, and stuffed animals and that makes it a lot easier. I also make sure there is a large laundry basket and a trash can. I just recently labeled his drawers and that is also a big help, but you need to go in a couple of times a year and just help them to reorganize and restructure a bit.
On Line Organization
One thing that has been a big help to me is my Google calendar. I have the ability to set up recurring reminders on both my account and both my son's accounts. I set up a schedule of reminders to clean the cat boxes, clean their rooms, have my older son and husband check the fluids in the cars, empty the trash cans, and do the vaccuuming. That has been a really big help because I'm terrible about remembering to do things on a set schedule. But my computer remembers for me just fine!
Truth or Consequences
In order to accomplish all this, you need to have some consequences in place for when the kids don't do the things they are supposed to do. We have several different methods that work for us. First of all, it is a standing rule that if someone doesn't do an assigned chore, they not only have to do the chore the next day, they also have to do a penalty chore of my choosing. We also have something fun where if they don't make their beds or do some other simple chore, their brother can do it and charge them $1 fee. That's actually a pretty good incentive because it really ticks them off. And on the chore checklist, if I catch him marking down anything he hasn't actually done, there is a two day penalty of loss of video games. Yes, I'm a mean Mommy, but it's working and it's saving my sanity, so I declare it a good thing!
Stop by next time and I'll give you some ideas for getting kids up and out the door in record time!
3/10/09
My SITS Spring Fling Contest
Welcome SITsas and friends! My most favorite blog site - The Secret is in the Sauce or "SITS" is having their Spring Fling event today. They are not only offering a fabulous giveaway every hour all day long, but just about every SITS member is offering a give away on their blog. All you have to do is click the pretty button below to go to the site and pick which contests you'd like to enter. Fun stuff!
Naturally, I have to have a giveaway too. I have a great report for you of "Smart Tips for Smart Grocery Shoppers" and I'll include my quick 'n easy grocery list form, so you can put together your grocery list in 5 minutes or less and not forget anything you need.
There are three ways to enter the giveaway - 1. Share your favorite cleaning tip in a comment below for one entry. 2. Click my Subscription button and sign up for a new subscription for two entries. 3. If you are in the Salt Lake area, you can sign up for my next Messy Moms class which starts in two weeks. Details are in the post above and you can click on the Paypal button to pay (or I accept checks, cash, or other credit cards). That will get you an extra 5 entries!
Then click on the SITS button above to go back to the site and enter more giveaways!
This contest is now over. I've picked the winner via a randomizer.
The winner is Tamara at Tamben7996 (I had two Tamara's in my comments). I'll be contacting you to get an address to mail your report to. Thanks so much to everyone for entering my giveaway.
Naturally, I have to have a giveaway too. I have a great report for you of "Smart Tips for Smart Grocery Shoppers" and I'll include my quick 'n easy grocery list form, so you can put together your grocery list in 5 minutes or less and not forget anything you need.
There are three ways to enter the giveaway - 1. Share your favorite cleaning tip in a comment below for one entry. 2. Click my Subscription button and sign up for a new subscription for two entries. 3. If you are in the Salt Lake area, you can sign up for my next Messy Moms class which starts in two weeks. Details are in the post above and you can click on the Paypal button to pay (or I accept checks, cash, or other credit cards). That will get you an extra 5 entries!
Then click on the SITS button above to go back to the site and enter more giveaways!
This contest is now over. I've picked the winner via a randomizer.
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The winner is Tamara at Tamben7996 (I had two Tamara's in my comments). I'll be contacting you to get an address to mail your report to. Thanks so much to everyone for entering my giveaway.
3/8/09
Declutter Weekend
I had a very productive weekend! We were having a big party for my husband's birthday - about 18 people, so went spent most of the weekend tidying up and getting ready for the party. In the course of doing all that, we ended up removing a TRUCKLOAD of unneeded stuff out of our house. Yes, a truckload! And when you consider that our house isn't really all that cluttered, that is quite an achievement.
Here's how we did it. First I organized all the movies. This project has been in progress for a couple of weeks. As we have been repainting our basement, I decided to switch my movies and my books. I had half the books in our built-in bookshelf downstairs and half in a freestanding bookcase in my guest room and the same thing with the movies - half in the basement and half upstairs. So I decided to switch them and get them all in the same place, so it would make more sense. Here is the final result:
I sorted out all the movies by category and labeled each shelf to help keep them organized. There are chick flicks, kids movies, westerns (my husband has a whole shelf!), action movies, comedies, and dramas. As I was doing this, I sorted out all of our old home movies and put them in a special place where they would be extra safe and I also weeded out a large box of VHS movies that were either duplicates, or ones we had taped off of TV. I made a list of those movies so we can work on buying them on DVD a few at a time. I wish I'd thought to take a before picture, but believe me, it didn't look all nice & neat like this. Movies were stacked up all haphazard and messy taking up a lot more room.
Here is the final result on the bookshelves:
Again, a great improvement, though I didn't really get rid of very many books. I had already decluttered two big boxes of them before we moved into this house two years ago.
While I was putting all the movies in order, I had my son bring up his whole toy box, one drawer at a time. Now that he's 10 and very into video games and computers, he doesn't play much with toys any more. So I asked him to pick out 5 or 10 toys out of each drawer that he really wanted to keep and the rest of them went into the giveaway box. Fortunately, he's always very good natured about this and doesn't seem to mind giving away toys as long as he can keep his favorites. In fact, I think he's a little relieved to have a bit less to deal with. So, that added 2 more big boxes to the truckload.
Then our DVD player broke. I know perfectly well that we wouldn't ever get around to getting it fixed, so I just had my husband borrow the one from our basement TV for upstairs and put the old one in the truck. We have a Tivo downstairs so we rarely watch DVD's down there anyway and that's just one less piece of hardware to deal with. And I'm sure someone can take the time to fix it up.
This afternoon, I spent a couple of hours helping my youngest son organize his room. His dresser was a complete mess. Every drawer was filled to the brim with a haphazard collection of clothes with no rhyme or reason.
So we took everything out of the drawers and his closet (scary!). I sorted everything by type of clothing and size so I could see what fit and what didn't and how much we had of each type of clothing. Then I was able to determine how many drawers I needed to allocate to pants, shirts, sweatshirts, etc. In order to help him keep more organized in the future, I took my handy-dandy label maker and neatly labeled each drawer so he will know exactly where to put his clothes away and where to find clothes when he wants them. I was surprised at how many really nice items of clothing he had that were going unworn because they were hiding around at the bottom of a drawer under a stack of outgrown clothing.
That little exercise netted us a large bag of trash, plus a large box full of nice outgrown clothes and shoes. I'm sure a homeless shelter or other charity will definitely appreciate them. It was a lot of work, but it does feel so nice to have all our books, movies, toys, and kids clothing so nice and organized.
Here's how we did it. First I organized all the movies. This project has been in progress for a couple of weeks. As we have been repainting our basement, I decided to switch my movies and my books. I had half the books in our built-in bookshelf downstairs and half in a freestanding bookcase in my guest room and the same thing with the movies - half in the basement and half upstairs. So I decided to switch them and get them all in the same place, so it would make more sense. Here is the final result:
I sorted out all the movies by category and labeled each shelf to help keep them organized. There are chick flicks, kids movies, westerns (my husband has a whole shelf!), action movies, comedies, and dramas. As I was doing this, I sorted out all of our old home movies and put them in a special place where they would be extra safe and I also weeded out a large box of VHS movies that were either duplicates, or ones we had taped off of TV. I made a list of those movies so we can work on buying them on DVD a few at a time. I wish I'd thought to take a before picture, but believe me, it didn't look all nice & neat like this. Movies were stacked up all haphazard and messy taking up a lot more room.Here is the final result on the bookshelves:
Again, a great improvement, though I didn't really get rid of very many books. I had already decluttered two big boxes of them before we moved into this house two years ago.
While I was putting all the movies in order, I had my son bring up his whole toy box, one drawer at a time. Now that he's 10 and very into video games and computers, he doesn't play much with toys any more. So I asked him to pick out 5 or 10 toys out of each drawer that he really wanted to keep and the rest of them went into the giveaway box. Fortunately, he's always very good natured about this and doesn't seem to mind giving away toys as long as he can keep his favorites. In fact, I think he's a little relieved to have a bit less to deal with. So, that added 2 more big boxes to the truckload.
Then our DVD player broke. I know perfectly well that we wouldn't ever get around to getting it fixed, so I just had my husband borrow the one from our basement TV for upstairs and put the old one in the truck. We have a Tivo downstairs so we rarely watch DVD's down there anyway and that's just one less piece of hardware to deal with. And I'm sure someone can take the time to fix it up.
This afternoon, I spent a couple of hours helping my youngest son organize his room. His dresser was a complete mess. Every drawer was filled to the brim with a haphazard collection of clothes with no rhyme or reason.
So we took everything out of the drawers and his closet (scary!). I sorted everything by type of clothing and size so I could see what fit and what didn't and how much we had of each type of clothing. Then I was able to determine how many drawers I needed to allocate to pants, shirts, sweatshirts, etc. In order to help him keep more organized in the future, I took my handy-dandy label maker and neatly labeled each drawer so he will know exactly where to put his clothes away and where to find clothes when he wants them. I was surprised at how many really nice items of clothing he had that were going unworn because they were hiding around at the bottom of a drawer under a stack of outgrown clothing.
That little exercise netted us a large bag of trash, plus a large box full of nice outgrown clothes and shoes. I'm sure a homeless shelter or other charity will definitely appreciate them. It was a lot of work, but it does feel so nice to have all our books, movies, toys, and kids clothing so nice and organized.
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