Christmas presents and organising the children's bedrooms.

I do so love the festivity of Christmas, but after the whole Christmas/New Year period I tend to look around the house wonder what tornado has been through the place? This year Santa brought the children a trampoline and then just a few small gifts, but combining this with the other gifts that they receive from our generous and loving families, it adds up to quite a stock pile.

I was tempted to just get the kids to go and put the things away somewhere on their own, but decided against it after I took one look at the toy and game cupboard! I decided to make use of having my delightful partner home and the second pair of adult hands to re-organise it with the children. We emptied the entire cupboards and considered each item whether it was played with, had all it pieces or was age appropriate for this room and then put it in its pile. It is amazing how happy the children to put things in the "for other children who don't have as much as us pile". The children then put everything back in the cupboards with the most precious items up high away from little rough hands and the most used at easy access.

The little ones room required a lot more work as I still had lots of baby blankets and baby toys stuffed in spare shelves of their cupboards. We followed the same process with the toys as with the older boys room, but with the toys and games that were no longer age appropriate I put into boxes and placed in the attic. Hopefully hand down to my younger sisters one day soon. I also made up a box of gorgeous teddies that I want to keep for sentimental purposes and put them in the attic as well. I definitely wanted to keep them ,but as the children don't actually play with them (they all have a couple of favourites in their room still) they were just taking up space in the bedroom.

The Christmas de-clutter was then finalised by taking down the Christmas tree, decorations and cards that we had around the house. I think even the children felt a great sense of satisfaction from out work and enjoyed the new sense of order. The question is though how long will it last????