Another thing I love is that we have no bath toys in the bath room. None. You are allowed to bring almost anything you want with you into the bath if it is water friendly. They often choose things from the kitchen, or plastic toys. This is much more fun every night to find something good to play with. Sometimes I help them with supplying wash-off bath crayons (only one each, of course), or I get out cake decorating tubes, tips, pans. the cookie press, a bunch of baby bottles, a bag of recycling, hair accessories and brushes, cake pans and racks, a collection of colar stays and tubes they come in, a jar or coins, paper clips, etc.

You can’t imagine how much fun they think this is. As long as it can go in water, they can use it. Even vacum cleaner attachments make fun bath toys. And this way, we never have annoying, ugly, mildewing bath toys lingering around. Plus, they are happy to spend lots of time playing alone in there. Then we put them away before they get their evening milk and cookie. I help.

Before I give stuff away to charity, or sell it on ebay, I usually age it in my closet for a few months. (I know this seems a pain, but important as the one poster said about how annoying it was to have a mother who gave away her stuff without consulting her.) When the items have been out of sight for a few months and no one asks for them, I can then either bring them out as exciting fun things to play with, or give them away. This way you don’t make a mistake by giving away something you thought was dumb, but they were attached to. They forget about a lot of stuff in the closet, but sometimes they really remember the oddest things. They know my closet contains boxes of toys that they are not allowed to play with right now. They now they are for some other day. I constantly rotate things around, putting away the trains for two months and pulling out a box of cars.

Another good idea I love is the small junk box. You know when you get all that small junk from the dentist, goodie bags, gifts, etc. After they leave it lying around for a while I sneak it off to the shoe box in my closet. Then every once in a while if I need an extra 30 minutes I let them pick three items each out of the box. Or once or twice I have let them have the whole box to nosey through. They think this is like gold. (If the stuff was just lying in the bottom of their regular toy bins where it normally ends up, they just ignore it.)
Also each child has a large under the bed box with some toys and books in it. I count this whole box and one item they can play with at a time. They take it all out, spread it all over the room, etc. But, it makes for quick clean up, cuz all they have to do to move on to the next activity is just slide it out, scoop up everything, and slide it back. This stuff doesn’t have to be separated like some of the other toys. And we dont ever let it get too full. Sometimes I put surprises in there too. They will play for an hour or more with the new toy along with the regular stuff. And if you throw in a turkey baster, a meat themomiter, scotch tape, and some rubber bands, they may be at it for two hours.

Okay I could bang on, but probably no one is reading anymore. if you were, hope you enjoyed.