Stewardship

The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord. – Psalm 24:1

Stewardship - it is a vast topic. When it comes up most will connect it to money and finances - do your tithes and offerings reflect your commitment to the Lord. In other words, are you investing in God’s Kingdom?

Others expand their scope of stewardship beyond finances and into talents. That is, they understand that God has given them unique gifts and talents and they desire to use them for His glory. Are you pursuing the calling that God placed on your life?

Today, however, we will look at stewardship in a different realm - the things we own. As per usual, Erica has implemented a system in our household that has solved several challenges we have desired to solve. She has turned this particular project into a means of organizing, a way to teach and a way to be good stewards of what we have been given. What are we talking about?? It's our toys. 

Yes, our toys! We have lots of them. They are amazing. They are fun. They are colorful. They are educational. And, they are everywhere. Actually, they were everywhere. It is a blessing that we have so many toys for Nicole and Jonah (and sometimes dad) to play with. But, we noticed that some really cool toys were not being played with because they were mixed in with all of the other toys. Nicole would get some really fun toys for her birthday or Christmas but they would get lost in the chaos of the collection areas.

Enter Erica. She heard from a friend at church a way to organize toys that solved so many problems. We recently organized our master bedroom closet and installed custom adjustable shelving. With that, Erica got five bins that fit perfectly on our new shelves and created toy boxes for each day of the week. She carefully curated a mix of toys in each box and labeled them with their day of the week. Each morning she and Nicole go into the closet to pick out the bin for that day. Each toy gets discovered, played with and shared between Nicole and Jonah. And, since the toys have not been seen or played within a week they are like new toys. 

Master Closet Before

Then, each evening before bedtime Nicole and I spend five minutes cleaning up all of the toys, putting them back in the box and returning them to the closet. Together we stare at tomorrow’s box and imagine the possibilities. 

How does this new method help us be better stewards of our things?

First, our house stays clean. We don’t have all of our toys out and creating messes around our house that take hours to clean up.

Second, Nicole stays engaged and plays independently longer. Since she basically has new toys each day she spends long periods of time with each toy that she takes out of her new box.

Third, it gives Nicole, Jonah, and Erica something to look forward to each day when they go into the closet to get their toy box for the day.

Finally, we are able to be good stewards of all of the generous gifts we have received by ensuring that all of them are played with on a regular basis. A while back that Nicole had only played with a certain toy once on the day she got it. Since we cherish the gifts that people give our kids we want to honor that and make sure they are getting good use. 

It was a small idea in a passing conversation at church - toy boxes for each day of the week. For us, it has transformed the way we play with toys and more importantly how we steward what God has provided for our family. 

Master Closet After With Toys Above the Shoes

The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord. – Psalm 24:1