You can't always get what you want, part 1: Parents have right, too!

The summer after we married, my husband introduced me to his cousin, who had a brilliant system she used with her children when they were little.  Rena lives in New York City, so although she and her husband were financially comfortable, they had a small place without a tremendous amount of space for toys.  In contrast, my brother in New Jersey had more space, and the toys were taking over, squeezing them out of house and home.  I resolved that I was never going to let that happen in my house.  

(photo source: LifeasMOM )

When visiting my brother and struggling to find a seat not cluttered by my little nieces' blocks and doll furniture, I wondered how much longer their family would be able to stay in their house with the growing mountains of clutter, and when my brother and his wife would begin standing up for themselves and put a stop to the expanding mess.

As I already mentioned, my husband's cousin Rena had a brilliant system that I decided I would have to put in place when we had children.  Rena's children had rooms where they could keep their toys, but they had severe limits on how much of the family's common space they could take up with toys.  There was an entertainment center, étagère or whatever you want to call it in their living room, and the two children were allowed to fill no more than two shelves of it at any given time with their toys.  If they wanted more toys than would fill it, they needed to first give away something old to make room for the new toy.  Rena and her husband love their children, but the children were not the only people in their house.  They felt, and rightly so, that they and their adult friends who came to visit should be able to enjoy each other's company in an environment not dominated by children's messes.

I can't claim that my daughters managed to keep their rooms tidy.  For that, we tried buying clear plastic bins to organize the toys on the shelves, and we labeled them with pictures of what belonged inside (markers, doll stuff, building blocks, etc.).  They learned the fundamental principles of putting things away at Montessori preschool, but unfortunately, we removed them from their excellent Montessori program so they could start at their K-8 elementary school with the rest of the class.  Keeping them in Montessori longer might have reinforced the idea of taking responsibility for their things a bit better.  I might also have done a better job resisting the temptation to give them so much.  Both my husband and I grew up without many toys, and even though I tried limiting our collection to top quality educational toys and not a lot of cheap plastic junk, I probably was more materialistic than I should have been, maybe because of my own parents' austerity when I was a girl.

Fortunately, my bedroom has a large closet.  When the children failed to put away their toys after sufficient warning, I confiscated stuff and put it in my closet.  Then I could save myself the hassle of shopping for new toys by eventually giving the confiscated toys back for birthday or holiday gifts.  If the children couldn't take better care of them the second (or third) time around, I gave them all (the toys, not the children) to charity.  

I can't claim I found the perfect solution to the messy bedroom problem.  However, Rena's system of keeping the toys under control, at least in those parts of the house where I like to hang out, proved very effective.