Helping my kids clean up!
If you have a little boy you might be familiar with wooden railroad tracks and if you have a little boy anything like mine (aka “little J”) you might have oodles and oodles of said railroad tracks!
It all started with a train table from “Santa” (aka bargain purchase from CostCo). When we started with this method of play…which has now turned into my little guy’s hobby…the drawer under the train table seemed to suffice when it came to storing all those little wooden tracks. Soon, however, the tracks began to multiply and outgrow the drawer.
Enter tired, grouchy parents who were so worn out from a) picking up and organizing all these tracks and b) teaching little J how to pick up and organize the tracks. Seeing as I am all about organizing and finding new ways to do it I jumped at the chance to tackle this!
I hopped on over to our local Dollar Store and grabbed about 7 of these clear, plastic shoe boxes (ours have white lids).
I pulled out a few tracks of each type that I was planning to label (e.g., straight tracks, curvy tracks, etc.) and snapped pics with my iPhone.
Next I customized the printout size to about 2″x3″, print them out on photo paper and cropped them to resemble small Polaroid pics. I grabbed a photo-safe marker (Zig Memory System Writer) and labeled each photo.
Last, each photo went on a clear shoe box with clear packing tape.
Now, when it’s time to pick up little J puts the tracks straight in the corresponding box! It took him a bit to get used to this but it’s so much easier!
