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When we built our home I took great care in picking out the colors of our walls. However, at some point the color palette shifted from sophisticated mocha and sage green to primary red, blue and sunny yellow! My triplets were a little over a year old and I felt like I lived inside of the Fisher Price factory. Toys were everywhere and I couldn’t walk across the room without getting impaled by stacking rings! About this time I became aware of how different types of toys affect different elements of child development and how preschool classrooms can be organized to enhance the educational value of each play zone. I decided I could recreate this approach in our home organization. 
Every night we’d sing the clean up song and they’d drag the container from room to room putting in all the toys. (This was their first introduction to chores) Once they went to bed, I got out the next day’s container and sprinkled those toys around the rooms and switched out the larger toys. One day they’d have the little tunnel, the next day I’d set out the activity garden. These larger toys I stored in my closet. Switching the toys every two days seemed to work best.Incredibly they’d forget about those toys they hadn’t seen for a few days. It was like Christmas morning! Plus, they could actually enjoy the merits of each toy without getting overwhelmed by all the choices and they would play with each toy longer than they did when they saw it everyday! Separating them into type also helped me when I was out bargain hunting. If I saw a great toy I’d remember that I had a gazillion fine motor toys and needed more music toys. Initially I would gate off each room and rotate my gang through the three rooms over the course of the day. Eventually I allowed them to choose what room they wanted to be in. What I discovered was that this rotation created a schedule to their day that they thrived on. I may have felt that I was stuck in that movie, Groundhog Day, where everyday is the same as the day before the day before. But they needed the dependability of that schedule. And when you think about it, each of us is running our own little daycare so why not take some of their ideas and implement them at home? It worked for me!I also organized the three rooms we used for play. We put our dining room furniture into storage so that the dining room could become a playroom. This is where I put our quieter activities. After all, who can look at a book when brother is going at it on his rocking horse? We had a low bookshelf with picture books and comfy pillows, an activity table with puzzles and magnets, and our wooden train table. The family room had louder activities, the indoor slide/swing, rocking horse, Tonka trucks, Little People garage, sit n’ spins. The basement room had our imaginary play, the toy kitchen, the plastic house, the baby dolls and baby doll nursery.
Is your home shrinking in front of your eyes from the toys, safety gates, shoes and clothing? Do you want to find a way to reclaim your home and tame the Chaos? Here's some food for thought. Having three times the stuff forced us to think of ways to clear out our rooms so we could walk through the house without risk to life or limb. Here's what worked for us.Have you thought of other ways to do this? E-mail me and I'll post the responses here. 
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