Finished for Friday -- Upstairs De-Toyified!

Today, I'm joining Lit and Laundry's "Finished for Friday" project. Essentially, every Friday I will attempt to post about something I finished. It can be anything. A project. A puzzle. A book. Anything.

Today, what I (ok, we -- the girls were HUGE helpers!) finished was....

TADAH! De-toyification of the entire upstairs of my house.

For those who may not have been to my house, we have an entire lower level that is (with the exception of a pretty-much unused workout room (*sigh*), a small guest suite, and my laundry room), entirely devoted to my children and their ever-multiplying STUFF! But despite the fact that they have two large bedrooms (the littles share) with walk-in closets and an entire, very large family room lined wall-to-wall with shelves and bins and baskets for their toys (oh yeah, and a small play "house" that G'Pa Irv made for them under the stairs -- and a closet in the workout room where I recently moved their dressups), despite all of that...

ALL THEIR TOYS WIND UP UPSTAIRS IN THE KITCHEN/BEDROOM/LIVING ROOM!

It drives me crazy!

So today, I used going swimming as a giant bribe (ok, I think I used chocolate as a bribe too at one point), I got the girls to help me De-Toyify the upstairs. We literally scoured the entire upstairs to find all the toys and piled them in a giant pile at the top of the stairs. The girls took their play shopping carts and drove them all over the upstairs looking for toys to put in the pile.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the giant pile-o-toys before we relocated it downstairs. Suffice it to say, the thing was HUGE. It took the four of us a good half hour to move all the stuff downstairs (we'll be tidying up and toy-purging the downstairs soon -- maybe for next Finished for Friday!).

But the good news is... the upstairs of my house is de-toyified! I'm so excited. We had a long chat about how all the toys need to stay downstairs. I think I'll try a mini-Flylady routine with the kids and add de-toyification to our nightly getting-ready-for-bed routine... gather up all the wayward toys right before teeth-brushing, then take the toys downstairs as we go down to go to bed.

Now, at least I can find the floor to vacuum it, and I might even be able to get all our Christmas decorations put away by the end of the weekend!

Ok, off to swimming we go...