Suddenly your toddler has more toys than a toy shop, they all seem to have a thousand pieces and the thought of putting them away has become a horrifying nightmare. Every book and every professional nanny will tell you that the way forward is to get your child to do ?tidy up time?. Tidy up time is great ? when it works you feel that you both deserve a reward and suddenly you can see how parenting should work ? unfortunately you have a couple of bad days where things end up in the wrong boxes, then all of a sudden you realize that nothing has a proper home anymore, it all just gets put away so it is out of sight! On close inspection you realize that there are cars in every box and drawer, the train track which you used to so lovingly put away is missing a handful of pieces ?.



Now you have several options, you could diligently go through them all, sort them out and then try to get tidy up time to become more efficient. In the mean time it will be down to you to try to keep all the relevant toy pieces together.

You could be firm and go through the toys, work out which ones are now too young for your toddler and pass them onto a child of a more suitable age.

There is a third way, this is one of the hidden secrets of parenting, it allows you to succeed at tidy up time; to keep the toys in order, and to be able to see the floor if you have unexpected guests, also you can keep the toys so they can be used by a younger sibling.

It's easy, you find a space where you child cannot go without you; a room where they cannot open the door or a cupboard they cannot open. Inside here you carefully arrange the toys in boxes. You need to leave something accessible, a general toy box full of the bits and pieces of toys which don't have a home anywhere else, and another toy which you will need to choose quiet carefully. The second toy needs to be something that several children can play with in case you have children to visit and you have not planned anything. It also needs to be a toy which your child will not get bored of too quickly, perhaps a box of Lego, or stickle bricks, something with lots of different applications. Now comes the important part ? if your child wants to play with any of the toys in the cupboard then you just have to make sure that the toys from the general box and the other toy have been put away before the special toy comes out of the cupboard. The good bit about this is that you should never have more than two toys boxes worth to clear away, even if tidy up time at the end of the day completely fails.

Don't get stressed about the chaos of a toddler, just get a bit tough and you will all find life a lot easier, and you will suddenly discover how much more space you have created for your child to play in.