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Why do you ask? (Read my other posts and you'll find your questions answered anyway.)
Why do I ask? Because it sounds like your kids are older then hers.
Your profile is hidden, in order for me to find what you're saying, I have to do a forum search and probably spend an hour.
I just want to add that if you have money for the cute bins, go for it. If not, do what we did: find any shelves, cheap and ugly from a yard sale can be made adorable with paint. Hit the dollar store or Big Lots and buy baskets, or the canvas containers like the ones in the more expensive bins... various sizes for various items. It helps when they are little to print out a picture of the sort of things you want in there. When my firstborn was learning to read I printed out the name of the things too, like legos, or action figures, whatever. Also helped with putting their clothes away in the right drawers (a picture of socks and underwear along with the words taped to the drawer)...
We also really never let them keep board games in their room. They stay in a separate place in the living room and they have to play in there, so I know all the pieces get put away. Oh, and I beg every family member to NOT give gifts with a bunch of tiny parts! LOL Barbie shoes, etc., are the worst.
I ordered some inexpensive stuff from Target, and I have my daughter straighten up her room more often.
The last pair of glasses were found Wednesday (she had left them at the summer camp where she lost the majority of her things; supervision there is great, eh). That's the good news. The bad news is that she lost them at the camp again yesterday! LOL.
I just want to add that if you have money for the cute bins, go for it. If not, do what we did: find any shelves, cheap and ugly from a yard sale can be made adorable with paint. Hit the dollar store or Big Lots and buy baskets, or the canvas containers like the ones in the more expensive bins... various sizes for various items. It helps when they are little to print out a picture of the sort of things you want in there. When my firstborn was learning to read I printed out the name of the things too, like legos, or action figures, whatever. Also helped with putting their clothes away in the right drawers (a picture of socks and underwear along with the words taped to the drawer)...
We also really never let them keep board games in their room. They stay in a separate place in the living room and they have to play in there, so I know all the pieces get put away. Oh, and I beg every family member to NOT give gifts with a bunch of tiny parts! LOL Barbie shoes, etc., are the worst.
This is great advice. It's what we've done through the years as well. You can find baskets, buckets, tubs and bins at the thrift and dollar stores for very cheap. We keep shoe boxes, too - they are really great for helping the kids organize their toys. Our kids have lots of little bits like action figures or models that have lots of little parts... they keep the things separated and organized in the shoes boxes, and the shoe boxes stacked in their closets or under beds or on shelves. Once in awhile we'll wrap the boxes in recycled wrapping paper or comics from the newspaper just for fun, and to make it look a little nicer.
We also save small boxes... like the kind bar soap sometimes comes in, or the boxes toothpaste comes in, and they use those boxes for things, too. The soap boxes are the perfect size for hot wheel "garages". You can glue or tape them into a larger box with a lid for easy storage and transport.
Cereal boxes can be cut across and then diagonally from the top down to a few inches from the bottom and turned into magazine files. We use a lot of homemade cereal box magazine files for storage in the boys room as well for the paperback books, coloring books, blank paper, magazines, mail they receive, etc. You can paint or cover the cereal boxes with wrapping paper or decoupage or even paper mache it to make it look nice.
When my boys were preschool age, we kept a leaf collection in a scrapbook we made with old cereal boxes. We had a big leaf book/field guide for our area and we made labels for each leaf. That was so fun... going on those leaf walks were good memories!
Yogurt tubs (they come in lots of different sizes) and plastic peanut butter jars and even egg cartons can be used for organizing "stuff". My kids keep rocks, shells, and fossils they find on the beach in recycled egg cartons.
If you reuse/recycle food containers for storage and organization, just be sure you clean the things really well to get any food residue off. I feel kinda dumb saying that, but you never know!
I remember doing the labeling thing, too, as fierceflawless mentioned... my boys loved that. We didn't use pictures, though, we just did the words in english and spanish. It does help kids put things away, it can even be fun. When they were three and we started teaching them to do their own laundry and put their own clothes away, it was like a game. "Where do socks go?" One time the label we had for the table came off as I was cleaning. Before long I realized our youngest son had created a new label for it, in his own little 4-year old handwriting... in english and spanish. It was so cute. Kids really like order and everything having it's place, but you just have to start them young with it for them to have a sense of how to do it on their own. People are surprised by what even toddlers can do on their own when they are shown the way and given lots of opportunity for practice. It empowers a child to be able to do things for themselves, giving them lots of confidence and helps them have a good attitude and helps them feel independant. The look on their faces when they do something on their own, and especially if it's something they are doing for you, is priceless. They are so proud and happy... it's awesome. They may not be able to do it perfectly (doing dishes took a long time for my boys to get a handle on...) and they may need help because of their smaller size (like with laundry), but they can do alot, and they should. There's no reason they should be sitting there playing while mom or dad does all the work, they are part of the family, too. The more hands doing a job, the sooner the job is done and you can have some fun family time.
My daughter used to lose her glasses also. I bought 2 pair at Costco and promised reward if she kept them for a year without losing them. She kept them. As for the other stuff, just nag them constantly. After a while even they get tired of it - - or perhaps they just grow it out.
Ok, I only wish I'd seen such a thread years ago. This is normal, typical child behavior! I didn't say its desirable, or acceptable , just normal. My son tended to lose things in school, he wasn't the only one, the lost and found was like a WalMart! But the teachers kept complaining, like he was the only kid to ever lose things, tried to convince me he was ADD, put him on medicine, etc.
These things happen, there's no "perfect kid" pill!
He "aged out" of it. Just take it as it comes, don't make a mountain out of a molehill. Insofar as the little girl and her glasses, I would buy the pair she wants, then she wouldn't "Lose" them. Oh, I can hear it all now, its a control issue, she's trying to control Mom, she needs to learn personal responsibility, hey, one pair of the glasses she wants are cheaper than half a dozen she keeps losing. You can't win every battle. We all engage in "control issues".
My son kept losing gloves, so, I stocked up on Walmarts cheapest, 3 pair for $3, bought about 21, all black so I could match sets, on cold mornings when he'd lost his gloves it was easier to pull out another pair than the lecture about personal responsibility. Oh, I know, I'm "enabling" He's now 13 and keeps track of his stuff, hey, he was just a small boy then, lighten up!
My 5 yr old looses everything so does my husband, so for things like sunglasses and reading glasses(my husband uses them) its the dollar store, actually I buy my sunglasses there also.For things like toys or crayons, if they are lost or not taken care of well then it does not get replaced. I can rember growing up with tape on my glasses to hold them together if I was careless and broke them. Luckly my 5 yrold loves wareing his eye glasses. I did buy an extra pair, incase he does brake or loose the first, did not tell him though and plan not too. I just do not think I could put him through the looking like a dork with taped up glasses like I did. Blessings wintersskye
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(Read my other posts and you'll find your questions answered anyway.)
You can glue or tape them into a larger box with a lid for easy storage and transport.
