Clean up.

Today we wandered out into the toy room to play some blocks. As I tried to find somewhere without toys big enough to build a kick ass castle, or in the case of Austin, a very tall tower. I finally decided to actually go through and clean out some of his old toys from the toy room.

I've been talking about doing this for about 2 weeks because it's just so ridiculous in his toy room. He wants to play with something but there are so many toys on the floor that he brings stuff into the livingroom, dropping stuff on the way, so we have a toy-toy room, a toy-hallway and a toy-living room. Just for good measure most days we also have a toy-kitchen room.

I am also a bit of an organization freak. So one bin for cars/trucks/anything with wheels, one bin for blocks, and I just gave up on the other 2 and made them an everything else bin. I get irrationally annoyed when my husband cleans up and just throws stuff in the closest bin. When I do a monthly clean and go through the bins I get annoyed because the 2 year old doesn't follow my bin specifics. (yes, I know that is even more irrational then getting annoyed at my husband. lol)

So I start going through a bin, then another. I empty one full bin and start putting toys in there to go. I kept distracting Austin away from the growing pile of toys to something else so he wouldn't start digging and become attached to the toys again.

Finally I go through all the piles, and bins and cubbies and distract my child once again while I start picking up my pile and sending them out the back door. We will figure out what to do with them when he can't see me put them away. Some are for trash, but some are just toys he's had since he was a baby and doesn't really need now at 2 1/2.

This is the pile I managed to eradicate from his room.

Now his room was free of toys he doesn't need but there was still a million pieces of play food. I would hand him a piece and tell him to put it in his kitchen. So he takes it out to our kitchen. *ugh* Now, trying to get the cleanup to finish and stay clean, that is a whole other feat.

I swear my blood pressure is through the roof today. He walks in with a pepper in his hand, I ask him to take it back to his toy room and while he is at it put the pot and lid back there too. He puts down the pepper, picks up the pot, puts the pot back down and walks away. Leaving the pepper there too. I call him back, tell him to go put it away. He picks up the pepper and takes it back to his toy room. By now I want to start banging my head off the kitchen table.

As I'm sitting here and typing this? He walks into the kitchen with this.

A wagon full of blocks, a blanket, 1 shoe (yes, one. No wonder we can never find pairs.) and some kitchen food. Immediately I tell him to turn back around and take it back. Just after this picture was taken he went down the step and lost all the blocks. I ask him to pick up the blocks. He walks to the door of his toy room and starts throwing them in there. Oops. My Bad. Guess I need to stop doing that.

As you can tell by the picture we are still trying to get the rest of the toys out of the kitchen. And yes, the pot and lid are still sitting beside me. sigh.