Before we had Dexter, I like to think that our house was fairly clean. I've always had clutter issues & I wouldn't have won any clean freak awards, but if company was coming over we could usually be okay with a quick dishes job and vacumming job.
Now, with Dexter as a toddler, it feels as though our house is never really clean. For starters, there is the constant battle of the toys. I think I need to add "toy clean up" to my to do list because he just has so many toys and he could use a rotation right now.
Secondly, he can be SO messy with his snacks. One of the common things he eats is Vegetable Thins (crackers), and though he is good most of the time, he frequently decides that he should dump his crackers all of the floor, leaving a nice cracker dust on the floor after we pick them up. We have laminate so really I just have to sweep often, but it disgusts me how much is swept up each time.
On top of the not-so-clean, is the lack of nice stuff or areas that I can display my nice stuff. I like things to look nice & kids toys are not aesthetically pleasing to me. I'd love to have an isolated playroom but we don't have the space for that. Dexter is also the type of kid that is into everything and has to be told no a million times so I've elimatinated a lot of my nice display stuff &/or put it where he currently can't reach.
Anyway, I love having Dexter (& baby #2 on the way) but I SO miss having nice things and a nice house :-(
One thing we've reinforced in certain rooms (like our upstairs living room for example) is we have 4 of those big mats and the lego in that room - so when we play in that room at the end of the playtime everything is to go back into the bucket or at least make it back onto the mats. Otherwise we -only- allow the 'big item' toys (large in physical size) in the house and all the little toys (cars, trucks, etc) are to stay in his room. Occasionally things come out of his room but we have his bedroom set up as the toy room also (as you've seen) and he's grown to know that is how it goes. It elminates the pick up process and allows my living spaces to be relatively tidy.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be harder to train him now but woudl be do-able - but just a suggestion for when #2 comes? (I LOVE not having 'itty bitty' pieces of things floating around my house)
-Kyla