:: Adventures in Daily Living

4.03.2007

Toy Jail

and now Suzanne has something to say about older child adoption :: parenting :: shopping

Do you have toy jail at your house? We do (ours is the top of the fridge, not nearly as cute as the one pictured).

Toy Jail is where toys go that are naughty, you know, the ones that loaf about in inappropriate places. Whenever we find a toy underfoot, or left on the dining room table, or on the stairs waiting to trip someone, the naughty toy goes off to jail for an unspecified amount of time; once in custody truly unpleasant or incorrigible toys are often transferred directly from jail to the dread goodwill bag.

The children hate seeing their toys in jail and will pick up after one another which spares us all from the "not me" syndrome.

While searching for a toy jail pic I found the most tempting e-store, Blueberry Forest. We don't need new toys, but if we did . . .

Anyway, back to topic: What are your tricks for keeping the house tidy?

~Suzanne

3 much appreciated comments:

s said...: Anything on the kitchen floor/or outside a designated toy area goes in the trash and I am not a fan of toys so it is easy to follow through. I will sometimes give a warning if the toy has special value or if is has significant monetary value.; April 3, 2007 at 6:23 PM
Wendy said...: We use large plastic round tubs, the kind you get at discount stores, with the rope handles. Then we make a game of lobbing toys into it each evening. Toys that are misused or not taken care of go to the garage or trash can. Currently we are in a crayon-ban mode. All crayons were thrown away after someone colored on something other than paper.; April 4, 2007 at 7:49 AM
jeneflower said...: I love this post because it brought back a memory I had as a kid. I saw my mom struggle with clutter and I thought- why not designate an area for toys, etc. that have been left out. A place they could be locked up and the kids have to do jobs, etc. to get their stuff back. I thought I would do that as a mom, but I forgot about it. When I read your post I remembered. Thanks! I am going to do that!; April 5, 2007 at 10:17 AM

me! me! me!

Here I chatter about books, parenting, election 2008, recipes, teaching college writing, and the adventures of getting settled in with our two freshly (Fall 06) adopted school-age children from Russia. This blog is chapter two; chapter one is posted at Jamie & Suzanne go to Russia. I live in the City of Subdued Excitement, Cascadia, Land of the Free.

I am the wife of a man I call My Gift from a Generous God. I am mama to two lovely children, Dandy and Chickadee that became ours in September 2006 in a court-room in Siberia. I am the daughter of two people whom I love and admire. One of them, my dad, is a new (Dec 06) paraplegic.

In my previous life (B.C. - before children), I was a college English teacher, specializing in composition and ESL composition.

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This blog started life as hackosphere's neo and has been heavily tweaked and widgetized by Suzanne :: I got all the coding for the peek-a-boo posts over at hackosphere :: All my pretty little icons came from famfamfam :: The coding for the rotating banners came from Vince Liu :: The very cool tabbed sidebar widgets are thanks to the very cool hoctro :: The fun "Feeling Lucky?" toy -- which is currently disabled -- came from phydeaux3 (fido 3?) :: The pretty label cloud also came from phydeaux3 :: The elegant and easy to install related posts widget came from Jackbook :: I got all the social bookmarking icons nicely packaged for me at the aptly named Social Bookmarking Script Generator :: The 3 column footer came from Technodia :: The pretty sliding photo galleries are from CSSplay :: The recent comments widget is from Hackosphere::