Further efforts

in voluntary simplicity... the kids play area!
It really is amazing when you break it down into individual sets/items how many toys can be crammed into a small space! And I have most definitely found that when we have lots of toys available the kids don't really *play* with them as intended, preferring to make a game of tipping everything all over the floor & refusing to pick it up again!

But when we pare things back a bit, the kids start to actually utilise the toys and are more willing to help put them away again! And even with a much reduced cache of toys, there are still a multitude of play options available to them... this is what we have out currently-
Pencils, crayons, tea set, dominos & teddy balancing game...
Shape sorter, stacking train, 2nd shape sorter (all 3 new from eli's birthday!), basket of big kids toys - dress-up bears, wooden cars, wooden animals..
Animal puzzle, basket of baby toys - knit balls, a soft doll, wooden books, maraca & more wooden animals (and a wee felt dinosaur!)....

and zooming out-
Dolls house, box of wooden blocks, box for the wooden train set, dolls bed, a few playsilks & couple of crowns, little table & our Hug-A-Planet!
(and the bizarrely ever present orange balloon!! crazy..)

Even though it seems rather bare (well, to me anyway!) it is more than enough to keep three young kids busy for days!
Now to get the rest of the house to the same standard...

breaking the rules!

I realised a couple of weeks back that our games took up a huge amount of space in our study wardrobe - 4 shelves worth of precious, precious out-of-sight storage space!
And it occurred to me that much of that is air - air inside padded out boxes (you know how board games often have a cardboard bit inside to make a neat nook for the pieces & pad the box out to the size of the board..), and air between differently shaped boxes...

But why?! Why do the games have to stay in their original boxes?!
We've already gotten rid of the games that we don't want to keep long-term, so keeping them intact for sale purposes isn't a good enough reason to hold onto these space wasters...

so.. we got rid of this-
and replaced it with this-
which is a 25L (i think?) wheeled plastic tub, which holds a multitude of these-
little *labelled* snap lock bags containing the pieces/cards/money & rules, and, where appropriate, a colour-coded sticker to match with the game's board for easy pairing. Because i'm that sort of person. The outside of the big box then has lists of the games contained within, sorted into adults & kids games, and, again where appropriate, a note of what colour sticker the game & board has. See? I really am that sort of person ;-)

the net result being-
1.5 shelves taken up, and in a fairly orderly fashion, rather than 4+ all higgledy-piggledy!

The hidden bonus is that the mess factories living here are too little to open the big box, whereas previously they would pull the whole stack of boxes onto the floor & scatter the contents! So i'm very happy with this solution!