Toy Overload

Somehow today turned into, "Let's clean the playroom from top to bottom" day. It all started when we returned from swimming lessons, and Brady decided to sit in one of his little recliners soaking wet. If that wasn't bad enough, I went to clean it up and detected the scent of pee. His little swimmer decided it was too full of water.

I decided that if I was going to have to shampoo the chair, then I should shampoo the area rug that I have been meaning to clean since I bought it at a yard sale last summer. Our boys' playroom looked like a tornado had passed through, so in order to accomplish this, I had a lot of toys to pick up.

My husband and I have already been discussing clearing out a bunch of their toys, because the fun comes more in dumping out as many items as they can rather than playing with the toys and putting them back where they go. What a perfect opportunity to clear everything out and go through it! Do you think they have a lot of stuff?!

I couldn't fit it all into the picture!

I am through asking nicely, nagging, bartering, etc. to get them to clean up after themselves in this room, and I just happened upon an article of a very smart mom in Family Fun magazine. She had the same problem with laundry, so she made a stop sign to remind her kids to put their clothes away. She included little oops tags (like the phone number tabs you can pull off the bottom of flyers) to take off every time she had to pick up a piece of clothing. She linked the amount of tags they had remaining with the amount of technology time they were allowed on the weekends.

I am going to incorporate this idea into the playroom by letting the boys pick three toys to take back into the playroom. It is their responsibility to clean them up when they are finished playing. For every toy I have to pick up, I'm taking a tag off. If they have a certain amount of tags left, they get to pick another toy to add back to their collection.

This is the visual I created. I'm going to print it on red cardstock. That should hopefully get their attention!

 Here's a picture of the finished product. I even found some items to decorate that I had forgotten were in the closet. We'll see how long the clean room lasts!