Day 0: The Purge

Today we went through every room in the house and packed up every single toy, and I do mean everything. We put it all into containers and stored it in the attic for now. We have been living in total chaos for what feels like forever. It has been a never ending cycle of trying to teach the kids to put things back when they are finished, and to clean their rooms before bed, or first thing in the mornings, or just doing it for them, or....whatever. Nothing was working, and I have even went through all of their toys several times over the last few months leaving what I felt like wasn't very much, and all of their toys have a specific place in our home. But they still weren't taking care of their things. I do not want our kids to grow up and be unappreciative of all they have. I want them to learn to use their imagination, and I also want them to value the people in their lives more than things. So for the next 30 days we will live toy free. They were each allowed to choose one stuffed animal to sleep with over the next month; otherwise, everything is gone. No magnets on the refrigerator, no books, no bath toys, nothing. I will still be reading to them daily, but I will choose when the books are brought out and which ones, instead of having them all over the floor all the time. We plan to spend more time together as a family playing outside or at the park or pool. We will also still color or paint and play with play dough. We will be clearing out a lot of their outside toys too, but they will still have their trampoline, swing set, and bikes. I will try to update everyday with the things we spent our time doing in the place of cleaning up and fighting over toys. At the end of the month we will show our kids this blog so they can see the how our lives changed. They will be allowed to pick out their very most favorite toys then, and everything else will be donated. The kids will be taught what a donation is and why we are giving their things away to those less fortunate.

A few pictures from today while we were cleaning up (note-these were after we'd been cleaning for a while so the messes do no look no where near as bad as they originally were...we seriously had toys in every room in the house):