Toy organization tips
We don’t own a toy box.
Actually, that’s not true — we do own one, and I commandeered it for fabric storage in my office/sewing room. The idea of having the kids “clean up” by chucking dozens of different toys into one huge bin to make toy soup actually gives me a cold chill.
So how do we organize our many, many playthings? You’re in luck because toy organization tips is a favourite topic of mine!
Large collections of tiny toys:
Lego and Playmobil sets come with about a trillion itty-bitty pieces that need to be stored, but they also need dedicated flat surfaces for building and playing. I enlisted my handy husband to build a Lego table with storage below, and we also recycled an old train table into a Playmobil table. We recently turned a third table into a dedicated Shopkins station because I really needed to stop stepping on miniature banana breads and moccasins.
One-off sets:
Not every toy needs its own table, of course. I buy (and label) plastic shoeboxes for what I call “one-off toys” — things that aren’t part of a large collection, but do need their own dedicated spot. Paw Patrol figurines in one, Ninja Turtle action figures in another, Polly Pockets in a third, etc. Even larger toys like the Lite Brite (and its zillions of pegs) have their own larger plastic bin, and every bin fits on the IKEA Expedit shelves in our toyroom. For really huge one-off sets, like our wooden train set that no longer has a table to call home, I use a heavy-duty plastic tote bag that can be lugged from room to room.
Barbies:
Right now we have a (rather huge) plastic tote of Barbies, clothes, accessories and furniture that sits next to our Barbie house, but as the kids get older I plan to separate the pieces into categories and put them in separate bins or drawers. (It bugs me to paw through dozens of naked dolls and jumbles of clothes to find a pair of matching shoes.) In the meantime, I plan to get my husband to build a wooden storage bin that will act as a base for the house — saving floor space!
Art supplies:
We don’t let markers get anywhere near carpet, so all of our family crafting is done at the dining room table. That means I’ve dedicated the majority of our hutch to the kids’ art supplies, rather than dishes and glasses and stuff normal people would keep in a hutch. A plastic bin for crayons, another for coloured pencils, another for markers, another for paints and brushes, etc. There’s a drawer for colouring books and drawing pads, a drawer for homework supplies like looseleaf and pencils, and a cabinet for “special” supplies like coloured sand, flat rocks, stamp sets and beads.
Play food:
The built-in “storage” that’s part of a play kitchen is laughable — one or two tiny cupboards that barely hold a few dishes. So we use a plastic three-drawered organizer to store the food, dishes and utensils. It’s easy for our three-year-old to clean up her cooking messes, and it gets those plastic cookies and carrots and hamburger ingredients out of sight.
Puzzles:
Years ago, I started picking up small plastic lunch containers at the Dollar Store for storing puzzle pieces. I’d cut out the “preview” photo of the finished puzzle, tape it to the top of the container, and it would neatly hold all of the pieces. Now, not every puzzle has its own plastic container, but I do store the boxed puzzles in a plastic dishpan (also from the Dollar Store) so they’re all in one spot.
Tell me: how do you keep your kids’ toys organized?
The inappropriate school drawing
Well, guys, you were going to get a blog post about something adult-y today, and then my five-year-old went and brought THIS home from school …
There.
Are.
No.
Words.
Actually, no, there are words: Mortified! Horrified! All of the -ifieds!
(More words: Why is there a smirking snowman outside??? Why is the dude wearing boxing gloves? Why is the pee brown? He insists that what looks like a penis is actually a bum and that’s poop coming out of it, but … come on, now. Bums aren’t shaped, er, that way. Nor do they function, er, like that. Let’s stop dissecting it.)
(The toilet seat is up and everything! LOL!)
We have had a lot of discussions lately about how “potty language” is not appropriate around adults of any kind — me, Daddy, teachers, other kids’ parents, etc. — because both of the kids find it hilarious.
Apparently, we should have expanded that talk to include POTTY DRAWINGS OMGGGGG.
(On the back of the page, however, was a perfectly innocent drawing of my sister’s cat in her apartment building. So there is hope for the future generation and stuff.)
Seriously, bud, nice cat drawing.
NO MORE DRAWINGS OF BATHROOMS AND STUFF THAT GOES ON IN BATHROOMS PLEEEEEEEEEASE.
DIY wooden list board
I’d had this project on my to-make list for ages because the concept was so simple. A tiny roll of paper on a scrap of wood, creating a convenient spot to jot down grocery lists or to-do lists and then rip them off for taking along with you.
I bought the tiny rolls of adding-machine paper (which the kids hilariously thought was miniature toilet paper) and stained a small piece of wood with finishing cloths. But then the project was stalled.
I was stumped as to how to hang the roll from the top of the wood. I also couldn’t find metal strips that were wide enough to cover the width of the paper, but not so big that they hung over the edges. I asked my handy husband to help me but he didn’t have any suggestions (he has to be in exactly the right mood to bust out the tools).
Finally, I channelled a sneaker company and told myself “Heather, just do it!” Pinterest was taunting me and I was finishing that project one way or another. I held a paper roll up against the board and decided it didn’t matter too much if the metal plates hung over the edge. I was going for it!
Continue reading the tutorial in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Five ways Google helps me be a better work-at-home mom
I’m a Google girl, through and through.
They didn’t sponsor this post and I actually pay them money every month (for extra Drive storage, see below) because I am obsessed with them. They make it SO much easier for me to work from home, and I can’t imagine life without them. *faints at the thought*
I’m going to try to be brief as not to sicken you with my gushing, so here are my personal Top 5 reasons Google makes it easier for me to be a work-at-home mom:
1. Never lose your files with Google Drive.
There is not a single document on any of my computers — they all live in my Google Drive. Every story I write, every invoice I send (to clients who need an Excel file instead of my usual FreshBooks invoices), every presentation or seminar I’ve prepared. They’re all there.
This is really important for me, as someone who works either downstairs in my tiny basement office (on a desktop computer) OR up on our main level on my Chromebook OR at a coffee shop (rarely) OR at a client’s office (also rarely) OR in the middle of a freaking playdate because I need to do an interview at a time when I wouldn’t normally be working.
Because I take tons of photos for my DIY projects and need access to them at all times, all of my photos live in my Google Drive, too. I pay less than $10 a month for a TERABYTE of storage and I’m only at 19% which is saying something. I don’t have to worry about either of my computers (or an external hard drive) crashing and losing my work. If both of my computers spontaneously die when I’m on deadline, I could run next-door and pull up my story on ANY computer and it would be there exactly as I left it.
2. Save money with Docs, Sheets, Slides.
If you’re a freelancer, you don’t have access to an IT department that’s going to load up your machines with software. Have you priced Microsoft Office lately? $$$! Google cleverly created their own versions of Word (Google Docs), Excel (Google Sheets), and PowerPoint (Google Slides). You don’t download anything — it’s all created and stored in your Google Drive — and it has just about every single feature of the “real” versions.
(Let me simplify for the less tech-savvy folks who may have stumbled to this page: You don’t need to buy Microsoft Office! This is free! It’s awesome!)
Need to email a doc or spreadsheet to a client? I do, every single day. You can send things directly through Docs, Sheets, or Slides, OR you can download the file to your computer and attach it just like you’d attach a regular Word doc, Excel sheet, or PowerPoint presentation.
3. Tame that wild, wild email account with Inbox by Gmail.
We all know Gmail is awesome, of course. Just about everybody (and their infant) has a Gmail account. But did you Inbox by Gmail (a different site/app for accessing your regular Gmail account) is especially awesome for work?
You can snooze emails that need your attention but only after X, Y and Z has happened, or until a later date, or until you actually need to look at them again. It automatically groups emails into categories so you’re never looking at one massive list.
(This is especially helpful if you’re a journalist or blogger who gets a zillion PR emails that may or may not have anything to do with what you write. It’s easier to go through them all at once, rather than having them mixed through your *real* emails.)
4. Don’t be a hermit with Google Hangouts.
Even when you’re all alone in your basement office (hi) you can easily chat with clients or colleagues all over the world, for free, without even opening another window.
I use Google Hangouts to chat with the great people at Scratch or Sniff (where I’m a contributing writer). I chat this way with several corporate clients, too, because it’s more immediate than email but not as OMGPRESSURE as a phone call.
5. Organize your whole damn life with Google Calendar.
I’ve raved about my deep, abiding love for Google Calendar before. There is colour-coding and it’s a thing of beauty.
On a personal level, I use it to schedule our bills and automatic payments so I know what’s up financially. I schedule Darling Husband’s work (including his sleeping-during-the-day times and naps related to doing shiftwork). I schedule what I’m cooking for dinner and when we’re buying groceries. I schedule the kids’ school drop-offs/pick-ups and playdates and ballet and Scouts and cheerleading. I schedule my own Zumba classes and volunteer commitments and even Power Hours when I need to zoom around the house like a madwoman. I’ve made a New Year’s resolution to schedule more time to do things I enjoy, too.
But Google Calendar reaaaaaaaally saves my ass when it comes to my work. I schedule WHEN I’m going to assignments so I make sure to leave myself enough time to get everything done (doesn’t always work out that way, of course). I schedule deadlines for work projects. I schedule interviews and — here’s the critical part — set TIMERS to go off 15 minutes before and then again two minutes before, to make sure I’m ready and have that headset on. I have entries when I need to make calls and entries when I need to harass people for interviews (literally, my calendar says “harass” way more than it should).
I’m not sure how some people use a pen-and-paper dayplanner for this stuff because a paper dayplanner isn’t going to BEEP LOUDLY AND REMIND YOU OF AN INTERVIEW, IS IT? True story: I was once driving home from a playdate and my phone chimed to remind me of an interview in 10 minutes and I had TOTALLY forgotten about it. Because of that chime, I was able to zoom home in time and make the call. Whew.
***
TLDR; I am close to adding a charm to my necklace with the kids’ names. It will say “Google” and probably have a twee hand-stamped heart.
Tell me! What technology do you use to stay organized when you work at home?
The importance of teaching your child restaurant manners
The woman leans over and smiles expectantly. I take a deep breath and wait. This is the moment. We’ve trained for this. We’ve run the drill again and again, and now we’ll see if it’s paid off.
“I will have a cheeseburger wif ketchup, pwease. And fwench fwies.”
And the crowd goes wild! He did it! He ordered and said please, unprompted! I can barely order my own meal because I’m so busy silently congratulating myself.
“Restaurant manners.” It’s what we murmur to the kids as we’re walking into a restaurant, whether it’s fast-food or the “fancier” Italian place with dim lighting. It’s the quiet reminder that there is a certain way you behave in a restaurant.
We’ve taken the kids to restaurants since they were babies, and of course it wasn’t always easy. Babies don’t understand about not disturbing the other diners, and toddlers can be impossible if they’re feeling cranky. There were years of bringing puffs and crackers and toys and anything we could think of in order to keep them entertained in their highchairs. As they got older, that morphed into snacks, crayons and colouring books.
Today, with our three-year-old and five-year-old, we bring nothing but ourselves. If the hostess or server offers crayons and a colouring page, we’ll gladly accept, but it’s almost better when they don’t because the kids practice what it means to wait.
When you actually break it down, there are so many things kids need to learn about proper restaurant behaviour. Speaking politely to the server and remembering their pleases and thank-yous. Not pointing at other diners (pointing = rude). Not peeking at people over the tops of the booths. Not making an unholy mess under the table. Not messing around with the jam packets or the salt and pepper shakers. Walking quietly to the bathroom — and going before the meals arrive, rather than announcing they need to go the very second the plates hit the table.
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
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