Thread: Rotating Toys
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Abigail 12:19 AM 11-17-2010
I love this statement, " Help, I am drowning in sea of toys!" I wonder if it is a title of a book. It should be! I've seen MANY places, mostly homes though, that have TOO MANY toys out. Sure, kids can only be kids for so long so why not let them play. I don't think I could rotate toys over twelve months, it would drive me nuts storing something that long. Usually just 2-3 months should be good enough because it feels like a "new toy" again for most kids.

Year-round items: Dramatic house play items (dolls, stollers, shopping cart, a few baby items and blankets for accessories, dress up items, etc)..... blocks............. books............... puzzles........ games....... infant items ..........I might be missing a few. I know our Child Care Resource place says you could basically run your daycare with books, blocks, and balls....but sometimes balls are not good all the time. Outside they're perfect though, but we're talking about indoor play.

Things I rotate are stuffed animals (I usually donate after they are older, I don't like to store stuffed animals....Don't know why, but I'm not a big fan either.) and the stuff animals must be SMALL, nothing huge. I don't allow all the puzzles and games out at once either, but they're always available in limited quanitities. The little cars, potato heads, action figures....anything that fits in buckets pretty much. I can easily rotate bucket items and have a perfect spot for them (obviously, if you just switch the toys from one bucket into a storage container). Larger toys I don't like unless they can be year-round. I'm not very huge on storing items. My theory is if you can't use it, get rid of it. I do have some larger-space items like a railroad set that fits perfectly in a 10-gallon rubbermain tote that I would rotate, but I can bring that in and out every month if I wanted.

All my totes are 10-gallon and 18-gallon rubbermaid gray colored tote from Walmart. Why? They're cheap, they match, they seal shut, they stack, and they're carried year round for when I need more! I print what is in the tote on the back of an index card really large and full tape it across for when it's in storage. I do this in our garage. Here is the image...I think it works wonderful! (It looks better if you knew what it looked like before!) Yeah, one didn't have a label, but I needed to print it so now it's all finished for the winter! bring on the snow baby! Oh yeah, I just realized we have a finished photo of our garage too, but this isn't it. Just to let you see how I label things though....you don't need to hear about everything I changed in the garage, ha ha. sorry
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