BeBa

WOW, I feel SO good about my accomplishment today!!!! Two problems have been driving me absolutely batshit.

1. Jake’s toys. We have a large bin in the family room that contains pretty much ALL of his toys. (What isn’t scattered randomly all throughout the house, that is.) And my SIL has donated a bunch of toys and puzzles that my niece has outgrown. Which is awesome, but they have too many pieces parts to be stored higgledy-piggledy in a bin. Consequently, we have a bunch of toys cluttering the house and Jake isn’t even really getting anything out of them.

2. Bailey’s homeschooling supplies. Out of control. I had stuff stacked on the dining room table in the living room area, stuff stacked high on my upstairs office desk, plus misc on kitchen counters and in various other places. Aside from the stressfulness of the clutter, Jake is also getting to the point where he can reach it and therefore destroy it.

Two other problems that are unrelated, but tied into the issue at hand:

3. Desktop computer (Windows) downstairs in corner of dining room SO junked up with malware that it wasn’t even useable. But last weekend, Scott reformatted the drive, installed linux and set up user accounts for all of the kids. Also added memory so it’s zippier than it used to be.

4. Bookshelf on the landing that was mostly empty and made me nervous. Even though it’s pretty much gated off from Jake right now, eventually he could figure out how to use it as a ladder to perch on the balcony wall, potentially falling to the hard tile below and killing himself. Yep, not comfortable with that location.

So today, it all just jelled. Since Scott fixed the downstairs computer, Bailey has been using it as much as possible for her school work. As a result, more of her materials were getting stacked up on the dining room table. I started thinking, man, I really need a book shelf there…. <light bulb>.

So Scott got the bookscase downstairs and anchored to the wall. I consolidated ALL of Bailey’s learning materials (and some of her sisters’, too) – as well as all the piano music that Jake can get into when it’s on the music rack – onto the bookcase. I also now have a place high up out of toddler reach to store the puzzles and sorting toys and all the other stuff with multiple, small pieces, so we can bring them down one at a time, play with them and then put them away. Huzzah! He still has a toy bin full of toys, but that’s mostly his trucks and cars and plush toys and various noisemakers, etc.

That just all worked out very nicely.

Note the toddler-proofing chairs barricading the computer. LOL Love this age.

Funny how that stuff that was taking up SO much surface space on tables and counters, hardly looks like *anything* when organized neatly on the bookcase. I even have extra space to expand into.