I think I've reached maximum capacity

in my car.
As an early interventionist, I have quite a large collection of kid's toys. I think its an occupational hazard. I happen to love kids toys. That may be an occupational hazard too, I'm not sure. It does seem to be a common characteristic though. I don't bring toys in at all of my visits, but I do with quite a few. Most therapists that I know carry a large toy bag of one sort or another, but I don't. What I do is choose 3 or 4 toys that are at a particular child's level, and bring them into the house with me. The child gets to choose what to work on from those toys, or from whatever else they are interested in that day. I find that this tends to help their attention spans because even if they move from one thing to another very quickly, we often end up returning to an activity before the end of a session. Its also good practice for getting out and putting away one thing at a time. Most of my toys are stored in ziploc bags of various sizes. Gallon-sized bags are perfect for storing most puzzles, and keep the pieces contained.
Since I work out of my car, that's where most of my toys are, and it had gotten a bit...um...disorganized.This is the before picture, but it still doesn't get the full effect even if you zoom in. Most of the piles have things UNDER them. Proof positive that when I say my car is a mess, I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much everything in there gets used on a regular basis, although its almost time to retire my Play-Doh for the summer. With the heat here, it gets really sticky and actually retains enough heat to be unusable. The thing that looks like it might be a bedsheet is. I bring it in when we do Play-Doh or play with dry pasta as a way of keeping the mess somewhat contained (and avoiding the Play-Doh ground into the carpet issue).
I've been meaning to clean this all out for quite a while, but I was waiting until the AC was fixed since I was still shuffling things between cars. Or at least that's what I've been telling myself. Really, I just haven't had time, and I didn't have a good concept of how I wanted to organize it all. It needed to be reasonably stable, and at the same time I needed to be able to get at everything easily. At any rate, I've been having trouble finding what I was looking for, my AC was fixed, and I remembered that we have a rather impressive collection of boxes in the garage. I brought a few boxes into the house, where they sat until today while I mulled things over.Here's what it looked like when I started taking things out. Keep in mind that I drive a '96 Escort- this is not a large car. I was a bit shocked at how much stuff actually came OUT of the car. I'd also forgotten just how many puzzles I have. They didn't all fit in the first box, so I had to go find a few more.
This is what was left IN the car when everything in the previous picture was taken out. Remember I said that there more stuff underneath what you could see? This is the second layer. It got to the point where there were toys that weren't getting used because I had forgotten they were even in the car.
6 boxes (and quite a bit of juggling later), this is the finished product.My grand total is 2 boxes of puzzles, 1 box of artsy stuff, 1 box of books and touch/feel cards, 1 big box of fine-motor type toys, 1 box of toys for my really little ones (under the ball), and the miscellaneous stuff that sits behind my seat. Oh, and under the miscellaneous stuff is a big box of Lincoln Logs that I got at a garage sale. They're a bit fiddly and frustrate most of my kids, but I have a few who like them. The smaller plastic bin behind the driver's seat has dry pasta along with some scoops. Much fun. :) The puzzles are in the boxes behind the purple ball. I store them with the backs facing out to lessen the fading from the sun. There are also a few more odds and ends in that area that you see when you look through the back windshield.
Overall, I think this should work well. I'm not sure what I'll do if I get more toys, which of course is inevitable. I already have a Lite Brite that's waiting to get into my rotation, but it needs pegs (and probably a light bulb). I tried ordering some pegs on Amazon, but the seller stiffed me, and I can't seem to find anywhere else that sells just the pegs.
Oh, and the reason I don't store all of my toys in the trunk (other than the fact that I think I cram more into my back seat) is that after getting rear-ended last year my trunk is a bit smunched and I figure the less I open it the better.
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