Toy Storage

This past week, we found out from our landlord that he will be selling the house and we need to move out by July 1, just one month away. We are very excited that The Lord has made a way clear for us to achieve our dream of living on our sailboat and even getting us out of a three year, unbreakable lease in a house we have spent a miserable year and a half in.

We now have a move out/in date, we plan on leaving June 20th, that's just a few weeks away and there is still so much to do.

I've been busy selling our stuff and making multiple truck load trips to the thrift store for stuff we don't need anymore and things are finally starting to empty out around here.

Now on to the task of downsizing the kids toys and our clothes and books, etc...

I took two rooms of toys and whittled them down to these few bags, I was ruthless.

During our purge we went through all the old storage totes we had in the furnace room, sifting through old, musty smelling baby clothes and old school report cards from when we were kids and we came across all my old Nintendo consoles. Awesome. Now that the kids are of the right age for these we will definitely be making room for these on SweetHaven, original Mario brothers, super Mario brothers, donkey kong on N64 and Mario kart on the game cube, doesn't get any better.

I was originally planning on using one of the kids fabric bins in their storage units for toys, but they have six bins in their units and I figure we are going to need all of them for clothes so I came up with these bag ideas for toy storage. I made them out of some spare fat quarters of cotton I had from a quilt project, they aren't as sturdy as I'd like and probably won't hold up too long but they will suffice for now until I get some canvas or something to make new ones out of. The draw string goes round the top of the bag and seals it shut when pulled taught and then they hang over some hooks I screwed into the trim. It keeps the toys organized and off to the size of the cabin out of the way, genius if I do say so myself, of course the trick will be getting the kids to actually put the toys in the bags, not every plan can be flawless I guess.

Aislinn is so excited about our impending move, she loves her cabin. She is so thrilled to have her own space again and even though there is only a curtain separating her from the rest of the boat, this doesn't stop her from successfully kicking us all out. I think she just loves being able to say to her brothers, "get out of my room." 

The boys had more toys than Ash which I tried to explain to her when she asked why that was, I told her there is two of them in one cabin so makes sense they would have twice the toys as her. Oddly enough the boys old toy box that I was trying to sell, thinking no way it would fit on the boat, actually fits like a glove in the corner between the bulkhead and the storage unit and is the right size for holding all their longer toys such as light sabres and huge hulk hands and stuff.

The boys played together nicely all afternoon in their cabin.

On top of trying to downsize and change addresses, arrange final bills, cleaners and packers and movers, and try to get school done for the year, we still have to paint the exterior of the boat, install trampolines and lifelines, set up the grey water tank, pump out and overboard discharge system, as well as pick up the stove and install it in the galley alongside with the propane system and get a table. And unfortunately those are just the big things on the list, not counting the millions of smaller tasks that need competing. It's going to be a busy few weeks.