I am not good at the whole “pick up at the end of the day and wake up to a clean house” kind of person. I’m more of a “oh my gosh a bomb hit the house and I should do something” person.

I have purged a lot of stuff in order to help the initial bomb mess be smaller but it still happens. The kids love to cut and rip paper, spread their toys to ever corner of the house, and dump out each and ever play item.

Instead of wandering the house picking up garbage, toys, and clothes – because as a child you should take off random articles of clothing throughout the house, I instead sweep everything into a giant pile.

I then can sit on the floor with a garbage bag and a recycle bag and sort through everything. Then I go through all of the baskets and organize the toys into somewhat similar categories. I mean they only stay this way for a few minutes but it’s a start.

The kids play way better when everything is organized and tidy. They don’t have a ton of little toys which helps. Besides each of the baskets they have a book box, a dress up box, a stuffed animal box, a barn and doll house, a tent, and their play kitchen.

We have a small tote with extra toys that get rotated in also. It’s not a perfect system and will probably drive neat freaks nuts, but it works for our house and schedule. Since scaling down on toys it really doesn’t take long and the broom method makes it pretty quick.