10 Things My Kids Would Rather Do Than Play With Their Toys

Tired of the constant clutter, I decided to once again clean out the play room.  If you read my letter to Santa then you know how I feel about toys and clutter.  I emptied out all the bins and drawers, and separated the toys into two piles.  Toys the girls play with, and toys they don't.  By the end of my toy sorting, the toys the girls don't play with pile was huge, and the toys they do play with pile was definitely not.  So I started thinking, if they don't play with their toys, then what are they doing?  I thought about it some more, and now I present to you, the top 10 things my kids would rather do than play with their toys.

1) Wash Crazy Plates' bed.  Sounds harmless, but let me elaborate.  The girls took lotion, covered Crazy Plate's bed and dresser with it, then spread it around with baby wipes.  They have also cleaned the bathroom with liquid soap and toilet paper.  Not helpful. 

2) Make a tower.  While most kids would use building blocks or Lego to build a tower, mine use all the toiletry items in my bathroom cupboards.  Awesome.

3) Play dress up.  With my clothes, and my shoes.  Sometimes they use the clothes in their laundry hamper.  Either way, I'm left with piles of clothes and shoes all over the second floor of our house. 

4) Decorate the furniture with stickers.  Yes, technically speaking they are playing with their toys by using their stickers, but furniture decorating is not an approved usage for said stickers. 

5) Re-arrange the DVDs.  This one drives me nuts.  I love organizing, but I don't love tidying up.  Tidying up DVDs that have been perfectly organized is not a fun activity for me.

6) Write on my kitchen calendar.  Yes, I still have a kitchen calendar.  A little background on me.  My phone is ancient.  It is a phone, it has primitive texting abilities, and a camera that doesn't deserve to be called a camera.  There are no apps or calendars on my phone so my kitchen calendar is my lifeline.  Colouring in the boxes and drawing flowers over doctor's appointments is the equivalent of dropping a smart phone into the toilet.   

7) Change their clothes 10 times a day.  Literally.  10 times a day.  I'm all for letting the girls expressing themselves through fashion, but again, this activity just leaves me with piles of clothes to sort through and put away. 

8) Empty the Kleenex box.  This is something cute that babies do.  It's fun to watch the excitement on their faces as they pull out one Kleenex, only to find another one pop up right behind it.  Now that my girls are 3 and 5, their Kleenex box fun involves using as many Kleenexes as they can to blow their noses, and, the best part?  They stuff the used Kleenexes back into the Kleenex box.  Gross.

9) Push the panic button on my car key fob.  For as many times as they've done this, you'd think I'd have figured out how to turn the horn off, once the panic button has been pushed.  Well, I haven't.

10) Wallpaper the kitchen.  With post it notes.   

And so, if you happen to be strolling the toy section of my local Good Will, you're welcome. 

Oh, one more to add to the list.  This is a picture of what Crazy Plates did for my birthday last year.  She pulled a chair over to the counter, climbed up onto the counter, spread out all of my wooden spoons and spatulas, opened up the coffee puck storage drawer and took out some pucks, took the lid off of the olive oil, stuck the lid in the spout of the kettle, then took the chili oil and covered herself and the counter top with it.  I found her leafing through some photos with her chili oil soaked hands.  Sigh...