So I don’t think I’ve ever done a Tackle it Tuesday for the simple reason that I sadly don’t seem to tackle very much – at least not much worth blogging about. But there has been this little issue that has been driving me a little insane for oh say 2 years now. My son, love him though I do, has too many toys. I know there are a lot of kids out there with more toys than him, but for us, it’s too much. Namely because he just plain doesn’t treat them with respect – he’s not content to actually play with the toys, but would rather have a toy throwing bonanza of wisking several toys into the air, so they fall like confetti around him – at least, that’s what you’d imagine from the look of our apartment. It drives me insane. And I keep saying, “One of these days, I’m going to get rid of HALF these toys,” but I always manage to fall short of that goal, and simply tried to find new ways to organize the junk – I mean toys. But the problem is, I can organize till I’m blue in the face, it won’t make him stop making messes – he’ll take them out of whatever container I put them, no matter how cute the container is (maybe especially if it’s cute). It was time to buck up and make a cut.

I gathered all of his toys into the living room while he was napping on Sunday and started making piles – first, simply of what went with what so that any toy had all it’s pieces, regardless of where it was going next. Then I talked with my husband, through the pile, about each toy – who had given it to us, how many other toys were like it (I started organizing the pile into categories here), and how he treated the toy – was it a favorite or just something to throw into the wall? Some toys were harder to decide with than others – maybe it was a toy, I personally picked out just for him – but for various reasons it had not caught on. Maybe his grandmother had picked it out just for him, but it wasn’t a great fit. And so on… we showed no mercy until all of his toys fit neatly in two baskets, which we’ll rotate whenever he seems bored with the current collection. Even with both baskts emptied onto the floor of our living room, it looked immensely better. He still had lots of toys, but they were the GOOD ones. Some we are keeping for when he’s older, some for when we have another baby.

The biggest thing we cut, were the little toys – all the little toys with little pieces that didn’t do much other than take up space, despite their small size. The box of clutter we got rid of was not big, but when the contents were spilled on the floor it was massive – like spilling a drink, the contents could cover a lot of ground. We also put some good toys that were just not a good fit for MM into three bags for some of his friends, who might appreciate them more than he did.

My living room is a mess, still, but somehow this mess is one I’m willing to live with – it’s toys he loves, and toys that  don’t look like a cluttered disgusting mess so much as an assortment of his favorite things, left in the middle of a very fun morning of playtime. And you can see from the look on MM’s face that he isn’t very torn up over the loss of those other toys, which didn’t make the cut…

Did you do something recently that you’re hella proud of? Something truly Tackle it Tuesday worthy? Write about it in your blog and then link up with other Tuesday Tackler’s at 5 Minutes for Mom.