Top 10- What I Discovered While Cleaning out My Kids Rooms

My status read on facebook this week, "Nocona just went Kaite Gosslin on her kids rooms today and even got the label maker out!" I have spent 4 days this week reorganizing my entire house to get ready for the new year. We moved in this house in November but in the ciaos of unpacking and getting things put away, not much was organized. Plus my kids got so much stuff for Christmas I had to reorganize. One of my goals this year is to keep my peace and be more disciplined. I want my kids to be more responsible for their stuff. So I got storage bins and a label maker and went to town. I am super excited about the little pink couches I found for the toy room. Each kid got $100 from their great grandparents and I found these couches on Tuesday for the girls to use their Christmas money on. They fold out into little beds too.

So here is my top 10 list I discovered:

1. My kids have way too much stuff! I cleaned out so much when we moved and had even more to clean out after Christmas.

2. I loved using Darin's label maker. It actually made organizing a lot of fun. Brighton even asked me yesterday when she could have her own label maker someday.

3. I found all the missing socks that are filling my laundry baskets without matches. Under beds, behind the bed and the dressers or just floating in their drawers.

4. My son is a pack rat like his father. He wants to hold onto everything! I could not clean out his drawers until he was gone. He had 4T clothes in his drawers still that he swore still fit.

5. Having more than one girl means double the dolls, and kitchen stuff. They had 6 baby strollers when I started cleaning out.

6. I hate kids meal toys. They are small and I think they multiply. I think Dairy Queen has the right idea when they give away a coupon for ice cream instead of a junky little toy. (Don't tell my husband I said this. He is a manager for Whataburger.)

7. I hate toys with a bunch of pieces. All they do is get scattered.

8. Stuff animals have no point and take up a lot of space. I am all for the special one that they sleep with every night and have a few favorites. But do we need so many! They take up space and if you are not sleeping with them what else are they for? This is a point of contention between my mother in law and me. She brought me two boxes of Darin's old stuffed animals. I mean huge boxes and gave them to my kids. (Did I mention he was a pack rat? This is where he got it.) The stuffing was falling out and they were old and dusty. Then my in laws buy my kids stuffed animals for everything! Some have been slowly disappearing.

9. It is much easier to clean out and organize when they are not with me. I was having to fight them from pulling stuff out of the trash and goodwill box. Then they were trying to play with it as I was cleaning. Thankfully my mom took them this week one at a time. They have not asked for one thing I got rid of. They actually discovered old favorite toys when we found a place for them.

10. I actually thought of Toy Story as I was getting rid of things and putting things in the toy box. It made me sad that Dalton does not play with his Woody and Buzz light year dolls anymore. He has even moved away from Spider man a little more and is onto Star Wars. I was a little sad to clean out all of his Spiderman shirts he had out grown and his first pair of baseball pants. They were the smallest pair we could find and we watched them got from his ankles to his shins in the three seasons he got out of them. I was able to get rid of all of the baby toys because Madie is now moved onto other things. Brighton is now playing with Barbies!

Now we will see how long they actually keep the rooms looking like this.