Confiscate the toys while the kids are at Mammie and Papaw's! :)
But the second part to the secret is to give the kids their own basket and tell them to pick out the toys that they really want to KEEP before they go visit their grandparents. We've always done this in reverse before - asking the boys to pick out what they are ready to get rid of - which was always a very sad, hard time at our house. But, picking out your favorite toys - now that is FUN! This time there were smiles and laughter. I've decided John is a genius since this was his idea!
We successfully pared down the toy monstrosity at our house. The boys knew we were doing it, but they were happy because they knew we had promised to keep their most favorite, treasured toys that were in their boxes. The toys are easy to find now and they even rediscovered some new favorites that had been buried before... and did I mention that they are HAPPY!
Our new cleaned out toy closet! (Notice that my nice little Dymo labeling stickers are falling off!)
p.s. The funniest anecdote to this story is that when Shepard came back home and started going through his basket of "treasures", he announced that he wasn't interested in keeping most of those toys anymore. (Seriously, he had been just tossing junk into his basket... but we were true to our word and kept it all, even the trash.) His passions change daily so yesterday's favorite was already history!
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