Thanks for the Suggestions, My Current Plan

   Thank you ladies for the great suggestions!  I'm not intending this blog to be solely about organizing, but that's been on my agenda these days so I guess that's what I blog about these days.  Some of the many great suggestions were shelves, suitcases for art supplies, clear plastic bins, morning/afternoon jobs, several cleanup times each day, being stricter on having the kids pick up everything, rotating my own kids toys better like I do with the daycare toys (not sure why I never did that!), and getting rid of the excess junk.
   I figured I'd start with the least costly solutions first.  We had several clean up times today, and to be honest, the kids didn't seem to mind at all.  The older kids complain a lot more about picking up, but those preschoolers get right to task and get the job done... anything for a smiley face on the happy face/sad face white board (I'll have to talk about that another time)!  I went to Target today and was excited to see that storage bins were still on sale!  Like... REALLY excited!  Almost as excited as seeing file cabinets being wheeled into the high school choir room 10 years ago (I know one of you will know what I'm talking about)! I bought 2 big ones and 1 really big one to start with, and a small 3-drawer unit that would make a great scrapbooking storage piece, but I'm going to see what I can use it for with the daycare art supplies.  I have a feeling it's not going to work out though.  My intention is to get into my daughters' room possibly tomorrow night, and start boxing stuff up.  I'm going to go nuts with the boxing up of things.  Usually when I go in there with a box it's to put things into a garage sale/donate pile, which is really hard for me, but I'm not going in with the intention of getting rid of stuff completely, just boxing it up for a later rotation.  Some things will get thrown away though, don't worry!
   I have no problem getting rid of my own unused stuff (for the most part) but it is so hard for me to do that with my children's toys.  I can't get past the knowledge of their things being gifts that they've received from people at one point, and who am I to take their gifts away from them.  But on the flip side, what kind of lesson am I teaching them about the value of unused stuff, or of living within their means/space.  They have so much stuff that they can't even play in their room, can't even walk to their bed without stepping on something pointy or breakable.  Is it worth it to them to have all that stuff if they dont have a bedroom they can play in, or don't even know where their stuff is?  I'm trying really hard to turn over a new leaf and have been thinking for quite a long time now about the lessons that clutter teaches my kids.
   I'll probably post pictures of my bins tomorrow (its after midnight, so I guess later today) because I'm excited to fill them up and get more!  I'll also write about the recent developments of my kids doing dishes, one of them has decided dishes are not fun, and the other is perfectly happy to pick up the slack... you can probably guess who felt which way.