We've had various toy organization systems over the years. When Kevin was little it was a book shelf with a few toys on it. At some point we moved up to shelves from Target with the cloth bins, which didn't hold up very well with our active kids (the shelves have held up better). Then when we started having more toy sets we started using plastic bins with lids. Lately that system was feeling really frustrating because sometimes a few bins would get dumped out to get to the one the kids wanted, or they would dump out several and it would all get mixed together in the playroom, and sorting it all out got difficult because we'd have to have several bins out as we sorted through all the toys. Eventually we decided we wanted a bulk bin/shelf, but buying anything like that would easily cost at least $400. Then I came across
these plans for making your own and Ryan decided to give it a try. They recommended using at least a miter saw, but Ryan managed to do it with his circular saw. Here are some pictures of the entire process:
I can't tell you how much I love seeing Ryan building things.
Here is the shelf all put together.
My contribution was to do the sanding. The kids helped a little with that. Then we decided to do a wood stain to finish it off.
I can't say it magically makes the toys get put away, but I think it's working better than all the plastic bins and it does seem to help with clean-up time and organization. Each section can hold quite a bit of stuff. We might need Ryan to make a couple more.
Here was another of Ryan's building projects. When we went to the store to buy wood stain, I was only half surprised when Ryan wandered into the wood section and started browsing, because now that we have a garage and power tools Ryan likes looking at wood. But it turns out we were actually buying wood, and when I asked Ryan about it he said, "Well, what else am I going to do over Thanksgiving break?" He designed these shelves himself and built them in the garage. They're working great! The space on the bottom is big enough to hold all the bikes and we love having all that extra space for storing all the things that were previously sitting in a disorganized pile. He's eventually planning to build more shelves that will go over the chest freezer.
We did a nature hike at the end of preschool one day. All the kids got buckets for holding treasures (mostly gravel) and toilet paper roll binoculars. We walked down a trail to the Savannah River, where the kids threw all their rocks in.
Ryan had a birthday! He asked for a jig saw. Okay, so he saw a jig saw at the store and bought it and then told me he loved his birthday present. :) We had
brownie trifle for dessert, but I substituted Oreos for the Heath bars.
Heidi was November's student of the month for her class, and we were invited to an awards breakfast.
I took a mirror selfie to celebrate six months pregnant and a new maternity shirt I love.
This was a mess I cleaned up on Family Search. The parents had been merged with three other couples, and to separate it all out I had to restore the deleted people and find birth and census records to figure out where all the children belonged. They were from amts (counties, kind of) all over Denmark. SOOO many obvious issues just in these pictures. But it was actually pretty satisfying once I had all the families separated and cleaned up.
We attended a living history event about Christmas in colonial times. We saw a blacksmith, a smokehouse, Father Christmas, some colonial toys and games, and a water wheel.
These are replicas of Spanish money. The coins could be cut into pieces, and the ones that were cut into eight pieces were pieces of eight!
One man explained several colonial era games. He showed us some old playing cards, and yes, with the stamp tax colonists really did have to pay for a stamp on each card. They didn't have any numbers or letters on them since most people didn't know numbers or letters.
