To be annoyed about missing toys

[Feierabend]

DD has some really lovely toys, but she always loses puzzle pieces, or pieces of her tea set, or lego bricks, and constantly looking for lost toys is driving me crazy. I am always crawling under cupboards, searching between sofa cushions and trying to find DD's hiding places.

DH thinks I should just relax and not bother looking and that everything will eventually turn up again, but when I play with her it frustrates me when the last puzzle piece is missing, or we can't find enough round sticklebricks to make the wheels of a car.

Also, now DD2 is more interested in toys, it makes me sad that everything she plays with is second hand and either partly broken, or has pieces missing.

Am I being completely bonkers?

yes....its normal,it happens!!

i have 5 dc....things still turn up unexpectedly in strange places ....the eldest is almost 16 and bits of hers re appear alot!

Drives me bonkers too. Am going to buy plastic wallets for the wooden puzzles we have in an attempt to keep the bits together. Am obsessed with organising toys and we still lose bits!

Yes you are bonkers, but so am I!! I wish I was one of those mums who could just shovel the mixed up carnage into a toy box at the end of the day, but I'm far too obsessive for that. I spend ages separating everything out and putting it back in the right place. Missing jigsaw pieces make me crazy!

Yes it crazes me ....fortunately having been a nursery nurse pre dc they have had it instilled in them 1 toy at a time and tidy up .....therefore ds3 is still playing with the intact toys and puzzles his older db enjoyed a decade ago.

Ah you see, in our house puzzle pieces are biscuits that DD uses to set up imaginary picnics and parties, so they get carried all over the house and that must be how they get lost. Also there are big gaps between our floor boards so I have a suspicion some of them have ended up falling through those gaps.

O/T but can you tell me where you got your sticklebricks from??? I used to have them when I was little but haven't been able to get them for love nor money for my godson and would also like to get some for my future DD (due in June).

thanks!

Oh, just seen some on Amazon. Sorry, I assume that if they don't sell it in John Lewis, it doesn't exist any more .

Ah funny you should ask that, I tried to buy them for Christmas 2008 and not a single toy shop in London had them. Eventually I ordered them off the internet, but have since seen boxes of sticklebricks in John Lewis!

nickschick - that's what I try to do with my DCs to stop it degenerating to ankle deep, but I sometimes wonder if I'm just going to make them grow up as bad as me! Sometimes DH looks at me as if to say "fgs just let them be kids and make a mess!" He's probably got a point.

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I am all for imaginative play so I like it when DD mixes and matches her toys and turns them into something completely different - so nickshick's idea won't work for us.

DH always says 'the more things have got lost, the bigger the chance that you will find something again'. He's got a point BUT....

yanbu. I get annoyed with it too. DS has labelled up Ikea storage in his room, mega blocks / puzzles / sorting toys / animal toys etc and woe betide anyone who mixes up the contents of the boxes .

I do keep a lot of jigsaws out of his reach so he can only have them one at a time and not just pull the whole lot out and fling them everywhere. We've managed to keep some of them complete so far.

feierabend - my dc did a lot of imaginative play - I was just v strict about things going back in the right places ....Im not saying im any better than you at keeping toys together nor do I want you to think I restricted my sons enjoyment of their toys ....it was just a nursery rule that I used in my home and it worked.

I used to pride myself on being able to keep all DS's toy sets intact. Now I've just faced the reality that this is what happens when you let children have things. So DS (age 3) now just plays in a bare cupboard (locked, of course - but we switch a light on) with sticks and stones from the garden and I have a pristine collection of boxed-up toys in my loft .

Only kidding. Basically, you just need to learn to chill out about it, much as it's a pain. And perhaps buy more second-hand toys so that you feel less attached to the idea of keeping them looking good.

Sorry nickschick I think I misunderstood - I thought you literally only ever got one toy at a time out

I spend a huuuuuge amount of time trying to find that one last piece of missing summat/puzzle pieces/lego man's hair etc etc etc.

I can't rest until I find something I'm after.

But I am a weirdo.

LOL Speedy, the thought had crossed my mind

The DGPs buy most of the toys but I was hoping to sell some of them on when both DDs have grown out of them... it's not going to happen though is it...

What about DD2 though, do you think she deserves some complete sets of new toys of her own?