Helpful Mom

Are your kids like mine? My oldest is an absolute stuffed animal fanatic. We try to limit the number that come in the house because they are everywhere and they want everyone they see, but they sneak in no matter how hard we try. And we haven’t mastered the sneaking them back out, Katrina has a memory like a steel trap remembering that random animal at the most inopportune times, especially if you’ve gotten rid of it. She’d most likely remember it the day after you’ve dropped it off at Goodwill ;P And did I mention she wants to sleep with each and everyone of these precious pets? So after weeks of bedtime calls for animals she couldn’t find in her ever decreasing bed we decided we had to come up with a plan.

We decided to get one of those nets for her room to store “extra” animals in. Fortunately for us I was able to get two hanging towers off Freecycle so I got them for free and one for each of their rooms so we were able to enforce the same rule with both girls. They were so excited by their beautiful towers that they both willingly went along with the plan immediately. We let them each pick a handful of their absolute favorite animals to sleep with and the rest all go in the tower. They can ask to play with any of the others whenever they like but they have to be put back when they are finished. And if they want to sleep with different animals they have to trade one of the animals in their bed for one in the tower to keep things reasonable.

There are various types of these nets or towers to choose from or you can establish a simple rule of for each animal that comes in you have to get rid of one you already have and have your child choose who goes.