Toy Rotation

I am a firm believer in toy rotation. Not only because it is a good practice in home organization but because I am a recovering toy buying freak. It is true. I went through a period a few years back where I bought an insane amount of toys. Just ask Brad...or anyone else who visited my house. (BTW someone once asked me if I ran a day care because of all the toys)

Most of these toys were from the line of Fisher Price's Little People. I love these toys. I love the imagination they spur when children play with them, I love the memories I had playing with Little People toys with my sisters, and I love that Emily played with them for hours on end when she was younger.

Now I have the space to display all these toys but not the desire to either
A) See them scattered about my entire house while I freak out that the construction set is getting mixed up with the airport set and the airport set is mixed up with the zoo set, etc. (I am a little compulsive that way.)

or

B) See them sit there while no one plays with them and than I feel bad that they are not being used and memories are not being made creating fun Little People adventures with each other.

So to make sure the above mentioned things do not happen, I store each set with ALL the pieces (if a piece is missing I can't rest until it has been recovered-I know, I know-totally compulsive). Then I store the sets in plastic bins and place them in my storage room until the time is ripe for toy rotation. I had the house set out but now no one is playing with it so I packaged it up (no missing pieces, much to my relief) and stored it away for another playtime in the future.

A few days ago, I needed to get a few things done so I took out the Little People Amusement Park and Construction set bin and let Ben and Sam have fun. Here they are digging in. Sam had exclaimed, "MOM, I forgot about these. I LOVE THESE!" It was just like Christmas morning but in October and it didn't cost me so much.
Sam can hardly wait to figure out what adventures the Little People will experience today.
Ben is thrilled with new toys. Although, every toy is new to him.

So the moral of this post is that toy rotation is a great thing. I makes your old toys new again. Brad told me we didn't need to buy anything for Christmas, we just needed to wrap up their old toys and give them to the kids again. As much as I would like to do that, I do still have that insane toy buying freak deep inside of me. It sometimes sneaks out at Christmastime. Oh boy, oh boy!