TheBanyanTree: Toys

[Margaret R. Kramer]

I’m sure my mother’s brain was a well organized file system.  She was the
most organized person I ever knew.  Everything had its place.  Every piece
of paper.  Every dish.  Every piece of clothing.  Every tool.  Every toy.
Nothing in our house was ever just lying around.  It was put away where it
belonged.

She had my dad build an elaborate storage system in our basement.  All
excess stuff that needed to be stored was placed in neatly labeled boxes and
stashed into this huge closet.  If any one of us needed something, we knew
exactly where to find it.

My mother would have loved those plastic storage boxes now so prevalent at
Target and K-mart.  That storage closet would have been full of
multi-colored lids with see-through boxes and she probably would have had a
color coded guide on the door to indicate what was in each box.

Well, I’m organized, too, but not to that degree.  I try to put things away,
but I have my piles of lost stuff, mostly in my office.  However, I usually
know where things are.  If Ray asks me for the 2002 tax returns, I know
exactly where to find them, and all the accompanying paperwork for the taxes
is in that folder, too.

Well, I finally decided to tackle the last room I hadn’t decluttered, and
that was the family room.  And what made the family room a real challenge to
declutter is my grandson’s toys.  Oh, gosh, do those boys have toys!

I began buying toys for the older one when he was a baby.  I bought
multi-colored storage bins on wheels put the toys in.  I bought a small
table with two chairs.  Later, we set up an old computer on a desk we bought
at a garage sale.  I bought books and color crayons and color books.  The
boys brought some of their own toys from home and took home some of the toys
from my house.  In four short years, the toy area was a vast jungle of
wayward toys.

I can see my mother rolling her eyes at this mess.  She would only let us
play with one thing at a time.  We couldn’t take a new toy out without
putting the one we were playing with away.  Our toys were stored with all
the pieces in the right boxes.  We rarely were allowed to take our indoor
toys outside.

The chaos that reigns in my grandsons’ play area would have made her sick.
Color crayons scattered all over.  Dinosaurs rampaging from one end to
another.  GI Joes without legs lurking with farm animals.  Tractors without
wheels farming in the Lego box.

The older grandson loves to dump out all his toys in one pile and then pick
out from that mess what he wants to play with.  The younger one, not so
obsessed with dinosaurs anymore, will find the Ninja Turtles and be happy
playing with just two figures, one for each hand.

When the toys are picked up, they’re just thrown into any old storage
drawer, so everything is mixed up.

My mission was to organize this mess and throw out broken toys, pieces of
toys, and other junk.  That’s what I did.  The dinosaurs all went into one
storage box.  The big trucks and GI Joe stuff went into another.  The
storage drawers now have a Lego drawer, a weapons drawer, a miscellaneous
action figure drawer (that’s where the Ninja Turtles are),  a Hot Wheels
drawer, and a small vehicle drawer.

I’ve noticed over the past few years that my grandsons love the complicated
garage sets for Hot Wheels or train sets that have lots of pieces.  They beg
for these toys.  Yet when we’ve set them up, and they play with them one or
two times, they get bored.  Then the pieces to those complicated play sets
get lost, and with missing pieces, these play sets are useless.

While I was sorting, I found miles of plastic train tracks, but where were
the trains?  I had to throw the train tracks away.

It seems to me that the boys really enjoy, although they’ll never admit it,
playing with simple things, like Hot Wheels, the dinosaurs, the Turtles, and
some of the GI Joe stuff.  The older one will take his Hot Wheels and set up
different scenarios for them on the family room’s coffee table.  He doesn’t
need some elaborate play set to ignite his imagination.

I threw out all the loose color crayons and ripped up color books.  I now
keep colors and books in my office.  The older one, even though he is five
years old and should know better, still thinks bare walls need to be filled
up with his drawings.  The younger one always knew to color just on paper.
How different can two boys get?

My mother is smiling at me now.  I’m organized.  Everything has a place.
The toys are neatly put away.

But what’s going to happen when the boys come over?  I’ll explain my system
to them.  The older one will nod in agreement and then proceed to dump
everything out.  I’m not a monitor like my mother.  I can’t get upset about
disorganized toys.

And before they leave, we’ll pick up all the toys, throw them in whatever
drawer is the emptiest, and that will be that.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on
fire, then you got a problem.  Everything else is inconvenience.
~Robert Fulghum