Toy Prison

This is one parenting win that I wanted to blog about: Toy Prison.

When I was growing up, in cases of extreme disobedience and uncleanliness, my parents would break out the threat of Toy Prison. We had a closet under the stairs and all our toys we wouldn't clean up had to go there for a week.

My husband and I had been talking about doing this for a while, but this past week we started making it the first resort instead of the last resort. Now, a few times a day, including before we leave the house, we set a five-minute timer and tell the kids it's time to clean up for Toy Prison. They have those five minutes to clean up everything they've taken out, and anything that's not where it goes ends up in a box in my office for a week of Prison.

The first time we did this seriously, about a week ago, our four-year-old was actually really excited about it. He intentionally left out toys that he was tired of, just so we could take them to Toy Prison (and yes, those toys may be disappearing forever!). Now our house is much, much cleaner and I don't have to do any of the cleaning--I just tell them it's Toy Prison time and the kids get to work putting everything away.

Even though we set the timer for 5 minutes, about two minutes in, the 4-year-old usually comes to me and announces he's ready for me to inspect. Things are usually totally clean. It turns out that a 4- and a 1-year-old can actually clean up a lot of junk in just two or three minutes! What a pleasant discovery.

So far Toy Prison has been limited to the downstairs--the kitchen, dining room, living room, and family room. But we're planning to introduce Toy Prison to the bedrooms soon.

One of my favorite things about this has been how well my children have taken to it. They just accept it. Sometimes they cry if something they leave on the floor by accident gets taken to Prison, but we just shrug it off and figure they'll learn their lesson. So far so good, and there has not been any lasting resentment over it. They seem to just think that Toy Prison is how it is.

We also remove toys if people are fighting over them. We had good success with this the other day--we had some friends over and they were fighting over toys, so I told them about Toy Prison and took the toys away. After that, any conflict over toys that came up was swiftly resolved because they knew that I mean business and toys that cause fights go straight to jail.

For a week. ;o)

Conclusion

Making Toy Prison the first resort instead of the last resort in our house has been fantastic. Our Prison population grows intermittently but it's a blessing--fewer toys in circulation overall. I don't keep track of exactly which ones get released when; my plan is to just bring some back out every Sunday and remind them to clean up promptly when asked so other toys don't have to disappear. This new system has taken a lot of stress off me to keep the house and floors picked up, and the kids don't seem to mind it. Win-win!

catching up

I haven't blogged on here very much, but it's probably time to change that. We have a lot of crunchiness going on in this house and I keep meaning to write about it somewhere. It doesn't really go on my energy blog.

So, sorry for no updates in a while. We have a lot of fun things going on. Crunchy fun things like DIY herbal medicine, a new Big Berkey water filter, homemade mama cloth and family cloth (!), reusable tissues, and a planned homebirth to take place in just a few weeks. I'll have to write about all of it.

In the meantime, this is just a brief apology for not blogging in so long. Things have been awesome! I'm excited to share!