This post is not necessarily less waste so I feel like I need to start with that. I’m sure that you could make it less waste by acquiring everything secondhand but I am going to be completely honest here and tell you that I didn’t. No, necessity/insanity drove this sinful buying spree. I was losing my mind with floors covered in little pieces of kid toys. We have relatively very few toys and yet, somehow, they were making their way all over our house and the clean up was adding to the mountain of work I am already trying to accomplish. Whether I cleaned it up or made the kids clean it up, if you’ve ever been in charge of children, you know both of those options are a lot of work.

So I borrowed from Montessori and changed the way things go around here. I love Montessori and if I was more disciplined I would incorporate it more in our house but I’m not so I chose a hybrid instead. The biggest Montessori aspect of this is the trays. I always thought if there was a spot for something, it would be easy to put back. I was really wrong. I’ve learned that it needs more than that. It needs its own vehicle. The girls take the entire tray with the activity on it, do the activity and when they are done, return the whole thing back to it’s parking spot. Some of the activities I borrowed from Montessori and others are toys we have around our house. This is the first shelf I have completed and I have one more that I am in the process of organizing the same way. I plan to switch out some of the activities on Sunday nights after they have gone to bed.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, this was not less waste for me. Admittedly, I bought the silver trays, kid scissors, note pad, mirror, red tongs, and Pom poms at the dollar store and I bought the bamboo trays on Amazon. This goes against a lot of ideals for me but this was a self preservation scenario. I was going to a dark place and now I am seeing the light and if buying a few things at the dollar store got me there, then so be it. I didn’t have the ability to wait it out while I combed thrift stores. It was do or die.

This is just the beginning for me. Today went really well and the house stayed so picked up! There was a lot of training to do and still do but the investment seems to be worth it.

If you do something similar to this at home, I would love to hear some of your activities! I’m trying to make a list so I can start acquiring the necessary materials at thrift stores now that the immediate needs are taken care of. I’m always looking for inspiration.