Some­times when I’m read­ing posts on oth­ers’ blogs, I read them, maybe leave a com­ment, and don’t think much more of it.  Some­times when I’m read­ing posts, the same topic comes up again and again or a topic hits close to home.  That is what hap­pened to me this week.  First, I came across this post on facil­i­tat­ing children’s play by Allie from No Time For Flash Cards.  Then, a cou­ple days later, I was read­ing her blog and Amy from Media Mac­a­roni had posted this!

For awhile now, I’ve been feel­ing like we had too many toys (just like that post by Amy!).  This sum­mer, we moved from a house where we had play areas in the liv­ing room, fam­ily room, and in the boys’ bed­room to an apart­ment.  Also, both K and A have had birth­days since.  AND, with Christ­mas com­ing up, I have been feel­ing over­whelmed with all of our stuff.  I know that we will be receiv­ing many gifts from friends and fam­ily, and we will have to find a way to incor­po­rate the new books, toys, and activ­i­ties into our rou­tine and space with­out com­pro­mis­ing access to some of my kids’ favorites.

Lately, I’ve been rem­i­nisc­ing about our days in our old house.  When we decided to put the house on the mar­ket, I packed up (and/or gave away) many of the things that we didn’t use.  We had some in bins in clos­ets.  We put some in stor­age, and we gave some to good­will.  Even though we had less stuff, it seemed to me that there was much more play­ing going on.  The boys fought less.  There was less mess, and they seemed to enjoy their stuff more.  So, between my nos­tal­gic mem­o­ries and now read­ing the posts I men­tioned above, I think our play spaces will be under­go­ing some seri­ous trans­for­ma­tion.  If I get brave, I may even take a pic­ture today to post as a before pic­ture and con­trast with my after pic­ture. 

Also, in addi­tion to want­ing less mess and stuff around, I also want to start focus­ing on Christ­mas more with the boys.  I want to talk about Christ­mas and what it means to us.  I want to do things for oth­ers dur­ing this sea­son.  I want to spend more time together and less time wor­ried about our stuff.  I am try­ing to fig­ure out ways to move the focus from presents and dec­o­ra­tions to love, car­ing, giv­ing, and Jesus’ birth.  I’m hop­ing that by start­ing to get our stuff under con­trol, we will be able to do more of that.