A tisket, a tasket

I am not sure where I picked this little trick up, so I can't give credit where credit is due... but this little trick has made the biggest difference for me in keeping our home somewhat picked up with 3 kiddos. 

I am not really a fan of storing toys in the living room. I have one small basket of "baby toys" that stays in our entertainment center and then everything else goes up in the kids bedrooms. My personal philosophy is that if they have too many toys to fit into their rooms, they have too many toys! 

But, we have a 2 level home and the majority of our "living" takes place on the main level. This means that a lot of toys wander down during the day. I don't mind at all because I like to have the kids all playing together and where I can keep an eye on them. But, it made clean-up in the evenings a major chore. And sadly, sometimes in my exhaustion I just let toys stay downstairs. 

Enter: the basket. The sheer simplicity makes me embarrassed to do a blog post on it. But, just in case it helps anyone I am willing to let my pride go... ha.

Nowadays I keep this basket downstairs. During our "quick clean-up" time during the day the kiddos or I can just throw toys in the basket. 

 Then at the end of the day during "big clean-up time" we load this baby up to the brim with everything downstairs that belongs upstairs.

And then my super strong and very muscly husband carries the basket upstairs where we put it at the top of the stairs and the kiddos grab everything that belongs to them and put it away in their rooms (and we encourage them to clean up any other toys that are out in their rooms).

And voila! A clean downstairs. A clean upstairs. One happy mama.

And then we start again the next day... :)

Linking up over at The Better Mom, Growing Home, and The Modest Mom today!