Stumped

Temperatures are starting to warm up around here (FINALLY!) which means the boys and I are spending more and more time outside.  Seriously, just writing that makes me want to do a happy dance!  Not only do I love being outside, but the boys seem to play so much better out there...and are in a much better mood the rest of the day because of it...so it's a win-win (-win if we're keeping track).
The only drawback to our outside time, though, is that I spend more and more time looking at the plastic junkyard our yard has become.

The funny thing is when I first started writing this post I was going to ask you all for suggestions of a better way to store all this stuff!  But as I was writing it, I realized the answer was so freaking obvious it was almost embarrassing I hadn't thought of it in the three years we've been here!
You see, we have three sheds out back (yes, three!).  While putting the stuff in there isn't exactly the most convenient place for the driveway, it seems to make more sense than buying yet another shed or trying to rig up some other solution.
So I took some time to brave the shed and clean out all the junk that had compiled in there. A lot of it headed into the trash pile (minus the cozy coupe and bike...that's just there because I hadn't moved it yet!)

And I gave away all of my old teaching stuff to a girl doing her student teaching at my old school which felt really good!

And once it was all nice and empty, I put all the kids stuff in.

Seeing that I needed a way to corral some smaller things like bubbles, sidewalk chalk, and some other things, so I wen to Target atnd picked up a shelving unit and some buckets.  I don't really know what else we're going to store on there, but I'm sure I will fill them up eventually!  We also kept the bigger buckets handy for balls/sporting equipment (which we seem to have a ton of!) and sand toys.

So there we have it.  It may not be the perfect solution, but it seems to be working pretty well so far. Plus, it turns out the boys enjoy taking the stuff in and out which has given us a whole new game out there!