In a truly Davis moment, I bought each of my children their own color-coded basket. These baskets live in my hall closet. The Theory: When I found my kids' toys downstairs I would dump it in their basket. At nightly chore time they would dump their baskets in their rooms and put away their toys. It would be a win-win situation as my downstairs would stay neat, and I would not be putting kids' toys away all day. In Practice: I attempt to put coat away in coat closet which (surprise) actually does contain some coats. As I cross living room floor, I trip over metal baseball bat that is NEVER supposed to be in the house and definitely NEVER supposed to be in Deacon reach, landing in a pile of Legos leaving the letters L-E-G-O imprinted in my knee. Finally I reach coat closet to find toys spilling out everywhere. I then yell, "Dang it! Kids, come empty your baskets in your rooms before I empty them in the D.I. box." Living room is not neat. Coat closet is not neat. Coat closet actually cannot close due to excess toys spilling out of it. But I digress from the purpose of my story....
The purpose being when the library books went missing, I knew the first place to look was in the baskets. Sure enough Deacon's basket contained Go Train Go! Parker's had a Batman book and The Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary. McKay's had a book about fairies and planting flowers in your garden. As I looked through their baskets I realized not only their books, but their toys defined what they like, who they are right now.
Contents of Deacon's basket: One plastic hammer, one Thomas the Train Engine ball, one plastic firefighter hat.
Contents of Parker's basket: One baseball, one slingshot, one Nerf gun, two baseball hats, and a golf ball.
Contents of McKay's basket: One pink, ultra-fluffy ballet tutu, one Strawberry Shortcake doll, one Hello Kitty puppet.
I'm all about gender equality. But it does my heart good to see boys that are all boy and girly little girls.
2 comments:
We just had a copy of the Lego Star Wars book checked out, too! And I love the basket idea, it might be just what we need around here!
So if the contents of baskets are a commentary on what we like, I like magazines, newspapers and toilet paper. What's in your basket? Shoes?
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