Toy Rotations

Madeline is our first and only child (for now) and she is also the first grandchild on both sides...so needless to say, she's a wee bit spoiled :)  Maddie has a ton of toys and at just over a year old I already see her getting bored with her toys.  Not only that but her toy bin was overflowing and half of the toys in there she couldn't even see/get to most of them! 

This is how I decided to start a toy rotation.  I did not come up with this but can't remember where I heard about it (probably pinterest haha).  What you do is have a few tubs of toys that you rotate out every so often.  I started this after Christmas and had 2 bins to rotate out and planned to do it once a month.  After her birthday however she has a lot more toys so I may start 3 bins and swap them out every 2 or 3 weeks...we shall see :)

I love this idea because:

• It keeps my house cleaner!
• I have a system for cleaning the toys
• It keeps the toys fresh and the child happy, it's like getting a bunch of new toys!

So, here is the toy bin that we leave out for her to play in:

And here is the tub that is stored away in her closet:

Tips to Make it Happen:

• Buy 1 (or more) tubs to store the toys in.
• Separate Toys - What I do is try and separate similar items.  For example, she has a few monkeys so there are different ones in each tub.  She also has phones in each tub (I think she has 4 or 5 of these!), balls, kitchen stuff, etc.  Also, I disinfect all toys when I put them away so they are clean and ready when we pull them out again!
• If your kids are older, this might be something you do during nap time :)
• Maddie also has a lot of larger toys - like a play table, sports center, slide, trampoline, etc. - that I have started switching out and may switch them out weekly.  This helps keep our living room from being over run by toys!
• I plan to be fairly flexible.  I don't switch it out to the day, I just try to about once a month.  Also, as she gets older there may be some favorites we keep out all the time and there may be something she wants to keep out.  I might say she can pick one thing from the current bin to keep out for another month, but we will see.

Hope this helps some of you mom's out there that have a house over run with toys and a child that "has nothing to play with".