Well, my 6 y.o and I started YESTERDAY actually, but then the 4 y.o came home and dumped EVERY ONE of the buckets we had sorted :mad:

I am hoping that if they are sorted and easy to access, this dumping behaviour will stop? Or he'll outgrow it soon? Please, someone confirm??????

I boycotted laundry at the old house because I refused to walk over the foot high covering of toys in the playroom to get to the laundry. I gave up on tidying up every day (even every week or month) the same dumped buckets over and over again. DH has done the bulk of the laundry for the last few years. This little guy will be 5 in the fall, is the "dumping everything in site" about over?

I am considering placing their dresser in the linen closet too, so it's less tempting for them to toss the clothes all over the floor. Is this just a band-aid rather than a solution? I've tried making them clean it up, but they won't unless someone is standing there coaching them and it still takes them an hour. They don't care about wrinkled clothes, either, leaving them on the floor and making them, wear them as is was no better.

We're hoping (once they get the lawn in here) that they'll play more outside ... therefore less messes inside?

Good luck. Hope it goes well. I've thrown up my hands in defeat in my 4 1/2 yr old's room.

I feel for you. Every time we get the boys room nice (they all share a room), someone comes along and doesn't put things away. Truly, our problem stems mostly from a lack of space. My oldest has to cram his clothes into a dresser which is too small - so his clothes always end up wrinkled and jammed into the drawer. His desk and dresser top also get piled with stuff. He does thin it regularly, but he likes to do a 'complete' job and 'organize' everything. (really into organization - too bad his backpack doesn't look it).

We also have toys in their room, but I keep shrinking them down to less and less. I have a chest of drawers in the closet (got that idea from Mama2many:) ) and then they have shelves in there too to keep toys - as well as shelves in the room proper. There just isn't enough space when you have 3 beds in one small room.

Oh, and better to stand over your child to get him to put away his toys and clothes than to just tell him what to do. Sometimes the job can seem overwhelming and the child just cannot focus on the minutae. Even if today you stand over him, eventually he will catch on and do it on his own. At least, that seems to work for my kids. Now I can tell them to clean up specific things and they do it (without me there). If the whole room is a mess, I take a quick look and then give out specific jobs: put away the blocks - then come back, now put away the cars, etc.

Here we have a 10 year old and 13 year old sharing a room .. they have a teeny room

its annoying really .. they have a bunk bed that has a built in desk and drawers and shelves and a HUGE dresser and some of the 4ft tall thin plastic drawers .. and a closet ... they have WAY to many toys and never enough room

I can ask them to clean their room one day and get it all clean and then come in while they are away and clean and vaccume .. and when they go back into their room its like an explosion all over again ! .. they throw clothes toys trash all over there room .. so i dont think that it is something kids grow out of .. WAHHHH heheh

Also the youngest Brittany at 10 doesn't care what her clothes look like .. i have organized her clothes and even marked her drawers with what goes in that area so she could find it faster .. and tried to put clothes that were older in one pile and newer in an other so depending on if she was going to school or going to play she could make a good choice .. i think that lasted a week until she dig through and ended up with all of her clothes wrinkled and in different drawers.* smacks my head* i have done that twice and had her try on clothes and took out what doesn't fit .. she has TONS of clothes because one of the girls down the road was moving and they were not able to take all of their clothes with them and did not have time to have a yard sale so they brought over a whole garbage bag FULL of clothes for her. Which was nice .. but made it hard to keep things in the drawers

For a while the girls room was so bad that i couldn't walk into it at all and it was a ft deep of toys and clothes .. i finally had it when they wouldn't clean their room when i asked .. i finally was very mean ..atleast they thought i was .. and told them that they would be able to go to school and get their 30 minutes of snack time, homework, dinner, shower ... but other then that they were going to be in their rooms cleaning .. needless to say they were in their room for 9 days .. when it would have taken 4 hours to clean their room .. before that i was having to clean their room for them basically because i would get so agrivated because they would sit there and fiddle and never do anything .. i sat there one time and had 3 bags infront of me and would pick things up and ask them if they wanted it ( if it wasn't literally trash ) if they said no or were not sure i would put it in the bag to take to grammies .. if they said keep it and it was clothes i asked them to try it on ( they HATE trying on clothes ) so anything that they did not like got put in the going away bag ..

the clothes that we got out of their room that were still nice i washed and took to a consignment shop .. 6 garbage bags full!! 2 bags of those were blue jeans... the toys are stored at grammies and we are thinking about having a yard sale

getting things out of the room that kids dont play with any more or have forgotten really helps make it easier to clean because there is more storage area.

Personally what i would like to do right now since its summer is get my sewing machine fixed .. relearn how to sew .. and pitch all the clothes out of the girls drawers since most of them do not fit anymore and make new ones .. also have a yard sale of all the things we do not use any more and use some of the money to buy things that are to hard to sew and use the rest to buy christmas presents for them this year.

My nearly 3 yr old dd is a dumper. She dumps everything... or puts it "where she thinks it needs to go" This is even more annoying because she hides things and then does not know where they are... the wipes were in my sewing room garbage can forever before I found them. A BRAND new thing of wipes.... I was not going to buy another, because I KNEW we had them, and it was like 5 days before I found them... lol... monster that she is.

Just this morning I am sitting here making her clean dumped cat food. Ugh... what is it with these kids?

I have been working on getting rid of A LOT. My kids only have a few toy stations now, and not even a lot of toys in them. They have their toy kitchen with all of its stuff, their doll house with half of its stuff, their art center (with the rest of that stuff put away... my dd with art supplies makes me twitch.), their organizer with all of the plastic and small toys (legos, Mr Potato Head, My Little Ponies, felt balls, dicast cars, and wooden tree figures), dress up clothes on hooks, their train table, and puppets, blocks, and doll stuff in baskets. That is literally about all they have left. It has made life much easier. They have the toys they love, but the rest went to goodwill and I don't ask for more. Their birthdays are coming up and I am asking for dress up clothes for dd, making her a canvas teepee for her new room, and asking for marbles and Yugio card organizers for Alex, along with a loft bed and a Gandolf the Grey costume from us. Anything else they get (unless they LOVE it) will be donated. Alex knows this... Cyan does not really care yet. I just can't live with the mess anymore. When we move their rooms it will be even more compact, and I will finally go through their books. ;) (a major weekness of mine)

Love Val

Both my kids are dumpers. Katie has just about outgrown it and she'll be six soon.

I couldn't bear to give stuff away, because we are doing play therapies with my son and I knew I'd end up buying the same toys over again at some point. But I put everything on heavy rotation, making a closet in our living room the toy closet. It helped my son because he would have to ask us to open the sterilite boxes to get toys out.

Now, out we have a toybox full of dressups, a dollhouse on a schooldesk with a little hideout underneath, the playstands with about six toys on each one, big trucks underneath the playstands, the wipeboard easel and markers, and a basket of musical instruments. Oh and then over by the door is our nature table, and next to that is a little table and chairs and on that is a box with Katie's bendy fairies and all the miniature bendy fairy gear and a little jewelry box with still more wooden miniatures. Still more - we have two low open shelves on our bookcase with some board books that Jake loves.

That is our living room and playroom (most of it is in the playroom). In the kids' room is a set of bunkbeds, a small dresser, a bookshelf with books and a few toys on it, another small shelf with four baskets of toys (mostly kitchen food), the play kitchen with dishes inside, a Moses basket with dolls in it, and a cushy reading corner with stuffed animals. And an art desk.

Yes, we still have a lot out, it sounds like. But you'll notice there are no blocks, no wooden or tree or pattern blocks, out, no train stuff out, no puzzles out, no little Matchbox and wooden cars and trucks out, no games out on open shelves. All the things that have little pieces are away. They must ask me for them. And they do. They may take out a few at a time but they know, they always know, they are going to pick them all up with me when they are done. We have a midday cleanup (before Daddy gets home) and a nightly cleanup.

I have maintained this for about two months now and we've had two occasions where we had to all pitch in and spend an hour cleaning up sets of things. Usually that was a once a week occurrence. It has made a huge difference.

In my case I just limit the toys. I have my 1 and 7yo sons sharing a room and my 4 and 6yo daughters share a room.

Mine dumped when they were 1-2 but grew out of it. I don't remember how I handled it with every child but I make it so dumping isn't accomplished easily and doesn't become a habit (like not putting books on the bottom shelves where the 1yo can easily reach it).

You do have to be a drill sargeant when they are little insofar as tidying goes.

I have the children tidy before lunch and before bedtime otherwise it gets so bad they feel overwhelmed. We hardly have any toys yet mine can make a mess of anything!