And Who Thought These Would Be Fun
There is literally thousands of puzzle pieces. I am not sure if every piece to every puzzle is here, because frankly my children never put them together. They take the pieces and fling them all over the house.
And then I have an aneurysm.
I am tired of putting together puzzles and sifting through pieces trying to figure out if that piece belongs to Curious George or the Muppets. Is that blue Madeline's coat or Cookie Monster's fur? My loathing for puzzles is second only to that of board games.
I have tried various ways of organizing them and locking them up, which sort of makes having them pointless, but nothing has worked.
So shortly after I took this picture I gathered them up into a garbage bag and tossed them.
My 6 yr old son suggested we box them up and bring them down to the fire station and donate them to the children in shelters from Katrina. My 10 yr old piped up, "I think those parents have enough aggravation already, I doubt they want more."
From the mouths of children. Of course I didn't add that parents wouldn't need to be aggravated if their children cleaned up their own damn messes.
And then I have an aneurysm.
I am tired of putting together puzzles and sifting through pieces trying to figure out if that piece belongs to Curious George or the Muppets. Is that blue Madeline's coat or Cookie Monster's fur? My loathing for puzzles is second only to that of board games.
I have tried various ways of organizing them and locking them up, which sort of makes having them pointless, but nothing has worked.
So shortly after I took this picture I gathered them up into a garbage bag and tossed them.
My 6 yr old son suggested we box them up and bring them down to the fire station and donate them to the children in shelters from Katrina. My 10 yr old piped up, "I think those parents have enough aggravation already, I doubt they want more."
From the mouths of children. Of course I didn't add that parents wouldn't need to be aggravated if their children cleaned up their own damn messes.
19 Comments:
I know how you feel (only on a much smaller scale, I'm sure). My daughter loves puzzles but she was constantly getting the pieces mixed together. To make them easier to sort, I drew on the back of the pieces. The Elmo puzzle has stars, the Cookie Monster puzzle has hearts, etc... It definitely saves time.
Of course, I could have picked a better example. Maybe 2 characters that are actually the same color? Because red and blue really shouldn't be that difficult to distinguish. :)
Odd, my daughters got out the puzzles for the first time in a long time.
Good thing that the almost 2 year old is anal retentive/borderline OCD and loves to put things away.
The other two were long gone.
And YES on the black garbage bags because they can see through the white ones!
i hate puzzles. hate them, hate them, HATE THEM! they are surely of the devil. thus, we banned them from the premises months ago...
Holy crap, Chris! I just had the same conversation with my kids today. I was deaf to the pleading, "But, Mommy! Those are my favorite puzzles!!" Four different farm scenes, all in one pile. And the Dora puzzles. Blues Clues. Right now, puzzles rank right up there with play-dough for me. Grrrrr.
Fun! Fun! Fun! I love the things kids come up with: matter-of-fact and simple solutions.
Yeah, I think your kiddo is right -- the last thing these folks need is puzzles :)
My favorite toy (at the moment) that gets spread around is Magnetix. Cause all I have to do is get the pieces near each other and they make a big clump. I can clean up magnetix with my feet...
Puzzles, we never had them and I know why. My mom was puzzle tarded and knew she never wanted to deal with it therefore no puzzles and no playdoh or paint to boot. Wow what a smart woman she was!
Is your son in timeout in that picture?
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I seriously thought myself the demon mother as I have a box of puzzle backgrounds and puzzle pieces (as I sure as he** am not putting them together myself) in the back room on a VERY very high shelf.
I'll have to share a pic sometime of where I have used a few of the wooden pieces...
I have figured they can do puzzles at school.
::whew:: that there are other's out there like me ;)
(that last entry was me - as I am still learning to spell :P)
No, he isn't in time out. I told them to make faces to show how happy they are to get to clean up the mess. As you can tell, not happy at all.
I confess, I am a puzzle person. I was anal enough as a kid to do one puzzle at a time and make sure all the pieces went back in the box when I was done. Because I loved them so much, I made sure my boys have a ton of puzzles also. And they are very good at doing them. Cleaning them up, however? NOT. My love for puzzles keeps me from trashing them all, though. My solution for now is that I cut apart the puzzle boxes and cut out the picture on the front. I put that picture in a baggie along with all the pieces. So I have a cupboard full of baggies of puzzles, one baggie per puzzle. For the board puzzles, I have baggies with no picture, and a stack of the trays. It works for now, but every once in a while it gets messy. I am still anal enough to sit down and sort them back out. I don't put them all together, but I do count pieces as I put them in the baggie.
I knew there was a reason we don't have puzzles in the house. It's bad enough with the legos, barbies, Thomas the Train, Fisher Price Little People...
Chris!!!!! You really missed an excellent ebay opportunity there! Someone would have paid a ridiculous price for that mess lock, stock and bag.
I have to say we (well, me anyway) have always been rather a stickler about puzzle etiquette. Each puzzle is assigned a big freezer bag. The bags are stacked on a high shelf and no child is allowed to access the puzzles without permission, punishable by death. Ok, not death. But close. The system has worked rather well for me. Damn puzzles look like new, go figure.
We do the same thing as Becki (draw on the back of puzzle pieces). Then the puzzle pieces go in a ziploc and the board and the ziploc go in a kid decorated shirt box. Game pieces are in a kid decorated metal bandaid box for each game. Whenever my kids leave things out for every toy I have to pick up they have to give me another toy from their room to hold in (as they call it the toy graveyard) when I catch them putting things away with out me having to ask they get to pick another toy out of the graveyard!
Needless to say I rarely have to ask them to put toys back when there done.
Once, not too long ago, I had a day like that. Me versus the pile of puzzles.
I put them all back together and donated them to our local preschool. They were thrilled and so was I! :)
Even easier than drawing on the back, get some of those stickers that (extremely organized and irritatingly perfect) mothers use for discipline or activity charts. They usally come with 40 or 50 of the same design. You can just stick one on the back of every piece, and then use the smart ziplock bag idea I hadn't thought of yet!
The stickers are usually $3.00 for a boatload of them. We use them at our house to distinguish which toy, shoe, bottle, et all belongs to which twin!
Puzzles were so easy to keep up with when I only had one child. Now we keep them locked in the attic and occasionally allow one to come out. Only rarely though.
Amen.
I too hate puzzles. I keep our kids' puzzles up on a shelf where they can't get to them and every once in a while when they remember they have them and ask for them I give them to them one at a time. They can't have another til they return the one in tact. I hate puzzles.
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