Our annual pre-Christmas toy purge

I'm not one of those moms who gets all her Christmas shopping done the day after Thanksgiving.  In fact, I haven't bought one gift for any of my children, yet.  Shocked?  I'll get around to it, but first I like to go through the toys and see what we have, what we need, and where it will go.  So yesterday we took a day off school and cleaned and organized the upstairs playroom.

Ahh, yes that's much better!  I came to the conclusion that my children don't need anything!  But, in case they do get a few toys, I now know where we can put them.  I'm hoping this new labeling system helps the kids to keep their playroom picked up.

We actually didn't purge that much, but reorganized.  We did fill up two garbage sacks full of broken toys or pieces of toys, scratched DVDs, etc.  I also re-alphabetized all the movies.  Whew, that was a job!  All the kids helped out.  Prince (4) worked in his room and helped run things downstairs for us, Measle (7) cleaned out the playhouse, Twinkle Toes (9) organized my Muffy Vanderbear collection, and Monk (11) went through all his Bionicles and Lego sets.  Measle turned the playhouse into a "nursery" so she could keep Queen (2) entertained while the rest of us worked.  It was a busy day, but a fun one.  Now to start on the Christmas decorations.