Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Family Schedule: Tuesday

Tuesdays mean it's time to tackle the Dining Room and Playroom!
The dining room is one of the easiest rooms to clean in the house. I wipe down the table after every meal so really all I have to do is sweep, clean the wood floors, sweep the staircase, and polish the wood. Our house was built in 1904 so we have awesome hardwood floors and this great 4 inch molding around every window in the house. As beautiful as this is, this leads to alot of cans of polish being bought month after month. Thanks so the dog, after each meal all crumbs and table scraps are cleaned up off the floor so sweeping is a breeze!
Thank goodness the dining room is so easy because it is paired with......bum, bum, bum.... the playroom!!! SO.MANY.TOYS. I go through the toys all the time and yet they seem to be procreating, especially those little toy sets with all the tiny pieces. Okay, I think I'm having a panic attack just thinking about it. I try to always have the boys sit at the dining room table when they eat and snack, but somehow crumbs seem to just find their way into every bin, crack, and crevice in that room.
Anyway, I take out the toys and sort them into Grant's bin and Morgan's bin. While sorting them, I wipe them down with a cleaning wipe and take out anything that isn't being played with, is broken, or is missing pieces. I have one bin in the craft/toy closet where I stash these items and after a couple weeks, if no one has missed them I get rid of them. I vacuum their play rug and the couch, sweep, clean the wood, and wipe down their craft table. When I'm feeling especially "nesty" I will take the rails off the train table and wipe that all down, but that's a once a month kind of activity(and if I plan it right, it will happen on a day when Morgan's lack of hand-eye coordination has already destroyed the tracks.) Tom loves to put it all back together so I leave it for him! :)
Over the years, I have inherited/accumulated tons of craft supplies, art things, and books so our large closet in the playroom is dedicated to these things. (Anyone want some supplies???) So I try to re-organize this area once a month as well.
I would LOVE some input on what YOU do in your play area and how you keep things from getting out of hand in their space. Any great tips or organizing ideas???

2 comments:

  1. Our toys seem to procreate too. Aside from the train & tracks, which as a daily obsession & have their own case, we keep the toys in bins and rotate between three of them. That way only one is out at a time. Toys get strewn all about, but pick up is easy because it all goes in the basket. Things with lots of small items, like mega blocks, balls, or lincoln logs come out by themselves... Alex seems to enjoy playing with toys more when he doesn't get bored... it is nice to have a basket to throw it all back in and let him push it back to where it belongs when we need a quick pick up time! I just started following motivated moms (the daily checklist) & also doing some flylady.com stuff - is that where you're talking about the zones? :) Fun stuff!

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  2. Some of that comment made no sense, lol - (almost 1 a.m., can you tell?) Anyway, should be which *are* a daily obsession... and down below I forgot to finish the sentence: "Alex seems to enjoy playing with toys when he doesn't get bored with the same ones all the time, so rotating works well for us". hehe...

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