Does your house look like this Christmas Morning?

The day after Christmas is almost always spent cleaning up! Some folks feel that they need a 12 step program to detox their kids from all the candy canes and gingerbread, while others feel they just need a break from family. Family clean up is just the thing to fix it up! After a whirlwind 24 hours of Santa, caroling, cooking, playing games, opening gifts and having fun, most of us look at our homes and think “WHAT JUST HAPPENED”.

Today the Diaz Duo and I are taking part in our day after Christmas tradition. It’s called “New Toy Day”. Now, before you think that they are getting to open any more gifts, this is quite the opposite. Today we take a look at the hordes of gifts they got and we sort them out.

We make three piles.

1st pile: Open TODAY! These are usually the games and toys that were #1 on their list. This of course applies to all the gifts they didn’t open yesterday.

2nd pile: We are going to open them and put them in their new home. Example of this is clothing, Legos,  cars, trucks, Polly Pockets, and any other small items that already take up way to much real estate in my home.

3rd pile: This one is my favorite! We take about 3/4’s of the gifts and store them away up the closet, down the basement, on a high shelf in the garage, wherever there is room. These are reserved for “New Toy Day”.

Throughout the year when the twinnies are sick or we have a day off from school with no plans, we have “New Toy Day”. Each monkey gets to pick a “new” toy from their pile of reserved gifts and play with it all day long. This is also OUTSTANDING for days that are too cold to play outside or when YOU are feeling under the weather and feel bad letting them watch a cartoon marathon.  More