(Lauren is borrowing Ben's account...)

With the four kids under 5, this has been a patient and ongoing effort on my part to keep. the. mess. down. My method has been basically to ruthlessly cull the toys to only a few and not allow collections at all. My rule of thumb is if I can't pick everything up completely in less than five minutes, we have too many toys. They have a small shelf for books, a bin of blocks, a bin of wooden train tracks, a Noah's Ark toy and some stuffed animals. They have a small wooden toy kitchen in the regular kitchen. We also have an art drawer with a box of pencils, a box of crayons, a box of markers and a small stack of nice coloring books and paper. There is a craft drawer with some knitting looms, a weaving loom, and the box for scissors, glue and other big-kid stuff. Eventually I think the art drawer may hold more advanced schoolwork items. I haven't been keeping any toys in the bedroom because it just gets out of control in there. And the girls have come to learn that the fun of coloring is mostly just the coloring and we only save a rare favorite off the refrigerator in a special file folder in Daddy's office. This is keeping things at a pretty sane level for now, especially since all the toys can be picked up quickly. Keeping things this spare seems to have been very good for the girls' ability to play well and do constructive things instead of just being constantly entertained.

Growing up, my sisters and I (five of us) all slept in one small room and we eventually learned that we just couldn't keep a lot of things. We put a small shelf next to each bed for each girl and there just wasn't room for more. You really do learn to make decisions about what you REALLY use and want to keep that way!