Mix It Up

When I tell my kids that we are going to "mix it up", it usually means that I forgot something or I am running so late that we're going to change our routine to make up the time, but occasionally, I change things around on purpose. A great way to do this is to rotate toys. This works especially well on babies and little kids. I've said before that we have way too much stuff in our house, and lots of that "stuff" is in the form of toys. If we kept all of the toys accessible, our house would be overrun with them and 95% of the toys would go unnoticed. By packing some of the toys away and bringing them back out after a few months, it's like having Christmas several times a year. If your kids are really little, you can actually have Christmas several times a year - open the gifts without your child present so that you can make the necessary thank yous and then save the toys for a rainy day. Just last month we brought out a train set that Mason lost interest in about a year ago, and he had a great time building new trains to run all around the dining room.

You don't even have to have small children to rotate things in and out of use. I always feel a little bit like I've gone shopping when I get my winter clothes out of storage each fall, and I know that my mom loves to rotate her dishes and tablesettings. You can have dinner with her every night for a week and see new things at each meal. So there it is, my latte for the day - Mix it up, and in the spirit of the day, I ordered a green tea chai latte when I went to Starbucks today.