As someone who longs to be lazy but is driven by the tiniest twinge of OCD (I hide it well), the result can sometimes be ugly, but other times geniusly efficient. Case in point is this Game of Puzzles which I invented out of desperation to maintain my sanity one day.
Toddler puzzles aren’t like big people puzzles where you connect pieces to one another to create a picture. Toddler puzzles, as you probably already know, are big wooden boards with shapes cut into the wood. You place the matching puzzle piece shape to the hole in the board and TADA! It’s amazing to watch your little one’s wheels turning as they make those powerful connections of which piece goes where.
The down side is that there is no decent way to store these puzzles. For the longest time I would curse the manufacturer for not making a case or a cover of some sort, because we all know those puzzle boards aren’t going to sit nicely stacked on a shelf somewhere –not in my house anyway.
Puzzle pieces were scattered about every floor in my house, under the sofa, and, yes, even in the training potty. But then one day, my single neuron of OCD kicked in. I had had enough of this puzzle piece madness, so I marched right into the kitchen and got myself a zip lock bag, willing it to fit over the entire puzzle as a makeshift case. Of course, it did not. But what did fit were the pieces.
Not being in a rational mindset, I threw every single puzzle piece I came across into the same bag, zipped it up, and set it in a big box along with the puzzle boards. Well, the next time my toddler asked for a puzzle I brought the whole basket out. He immediately took out the boards, one by one, and laid them on the floor. I dumped out the bag of puzzle pieces, intending to sort out the pieces for one of the puzzles but then it hit me. Why not let him sort them out? Little kids love that sort of tedious task. They eat it up.
Low and behold, my little guy set about matching up each piece to the correct puzzle and then to the correct slot. It was magical.
We have played this Game of Puzzles the same way ever since. I swear it makes his small collection of about six puzzles way more interesting for him and he will probably become a better human being for it.
They say necessity is the mother of all invention. Well, I guess you could say this mother’s invention was a result of the necessary task of fixing the major storage oversight of puzzle manufacturers. Seriously guys, a felt puzzle sleeve would be nice. Maybe I will fashion one myself for a nice crafty project one day, just to show you what should be done.
But we would, of course, still want to dump all of the pieces into a single pile for The Game of Puzzles.
