How many toys do your kids have?

Oh golly, Gaeleen, I wasn’t offended at all by your My Little Pony comment. I’m the one who tries to get rid of it; and she keeps holding on for dear life! hahahaha! Man, we’ve all got to learn to laugh a bit at some of our children’s quirks…they’re just toys!  Finding a balance is hard, whether it’s in discipline or good nutrition or yes, even how many toys our kids have. They’ll always have either too many or not enough as our perspectives change and as our children change.

This has been a great discussion! I have thoroughly enjoyed all the great ideas posted about organizing and storing all our childrens’ precious posessions!

Blessings to all,

Lindsey

My girls had a huge problem arguing over toys being “MINE!” So we had to designate a Sharing Basket for stuffed animals (lol @@) or other toys they receive from their birthdays or sunday school rewards etc. The toys they absolutely will not share go in small tubs or boxes under their beds. If it’s out (on the shelf, toy tubs, etc), it’s a “sharing toy”. So that means you wait your turn PATIENTLY if you’d like to play with it also. It seems no one wants to play with something UNTIL someone ELSE does. lol So that solved our problem. Kind of. I do think it’s important kids have some of their *own stuff*.

I also keep a plastic tub of their best artwork each school year, some we hang on our walls or on the fridge,  and we recycle the rest. Paper can get out of hand also!

Tara

God challenged us to get rid of half our stuff. It’s amazing what we have two (or four :P) of. If you decide to get rid of half, or any percentage it becomes “here are two matchbox cars, which one are we keeping?” For birthdays we decided to give one present from me, one from my husband, and one from the siblings as a whole. I told my parents what we were doing and they embraced the idea and it cut some of the twaddle! Does anyone have any ideas of what to tell family to get instead of twaddle? As you know it is impossible to get grandparents to stop buying.

What about Playmobil? I feel these are good quality toys, but we have so MANY! My boys are huge into the rescue stuff – police, firemen, etc. and construction stuff. So we have a lot of vehicles – dump truck, road grader, you name it. I feel bad about trying to get rid of this stuff. We have gotten rid of the twaddle, but it still seems like so much!

We are in the de-cluttering/spring cleaning process at the moment so it has been good to read everyone’s views, struggles and triumphs.   While looking for something else, I noticed at the end of “Formation of Character” a review CM had given of an essay titled “Ancient Greek Games.”  She quotes, “Plato recommends that children should have mimic tools given them, in order to amuse themselves with carpentering. But it may be gathered that he did not approve of too many toys, which are apt to discourage originality; he rather praises the natural modes of amusement which children find out for themselves when they meet.”

There is also a great Parents’ Review Article that addresses the difference between finite toys — those in which “nothing is left for the child to do, or for its imagination or ingenuity to supply” and their opposite, suggestive toys which fuel the imagination. 

As we went through the mountain of things in our children’s rooms from well meaning relatives and weak parents, I remembered my boys’ favorite plaything of the winter:  wax.  They took the ends of our candles and melted them in a tin can on the wood stove.  They made forms out of tin foil and placed those on foil lined trays or poured the wax and waited for the wax was cool enough to handle.  They then formed all their little figures and played away. 

If you are interested in the PR article:

Our Children’s Play:  Their Toys and Books.

Happy spring cleaning and beyond.

Richele

Great article, Rachele! It’s funny, I remember reading that and other PR articles years ago and feeling how profound they were to me at that time. But now with the passage of many sleep-deprived years and many children later, I realize how much I’ve forgotten. A great read. Thank you for reminding me. 🙂

The blog post that Callie shared early on in this thread was also inspiring:

http://lusaorganics.typepad.com/clean/2010/10/downsizing-and-a-challenge-for-you.html

One thing that really made me pay attention is how the two moms were letting go of what I would consider great toys (Waldorf type toys, etc) and stuck with just a few of those suggestive toys Rachele mentioned (that topic as well as examples of both suggestive and finite toys are in that same PR article). The blog post got me thinking about how I justify keeping so many toys because they ARE good toys, not twaddle, but the sheer quantity of even good stuff is a problem.

So many good, thoughtful comments made on this topic. Thank you!

Sara B,

I think Rebecca gave you some great ideas. Here are a few of my own:

• Your children are 8, 6, and 4, correct? It does seem that you have a few toys that might be a little too young for your childrens’ ages, such as Mega Blocks, Little People, and the Dora doll and accessories. That’s just my opinion, so please don’t think I’m trying to tell you to get rid of those items.
• It seems that there are a lot of toys with “accessories” (ie. Dora doll, dinosaurs, the Princess box, etc.). In our home, the accessories are what tend to contribute most to the disorganization and clutter that drives me crazy. Perhaps weeding through a few of those type sets or toys and only keeping one or two would eliminate the volume of toys as well as the potential for future disorganization.
• Another idea comes from my husband. We cleaned out big time again last Saturday. Although we have so much less stuff than we have ever had, this particular thread challenged us even more to really determine what was necessary and what was just “stuff”. My dd is great about not forming major attachments to things, but ds, not so much. So, dh had this idea to help our son cope with removing toys from his room: He suggested we take a large wicker basket with a lid and fill it with those toys that ds just did not want to part with. We then called my mom, who does not have a great toy selection in her house, and asked her if it would be alright to bring that basket of toys to keep at her house for when the kids visit. She happily agreed. That is another idea for you. If you have a grandparent close by who could use some “new to them” toys, you could “donate” your abundance of toys to their house and your children could still play with them.
• If you are at the place where you’re happy with what you’ve purged, then perhaps it’s time to stop. If you’re still not happy with it and feel like you need to get rid of more, then go for it. Letting go of stuff isn’t something that happens overnight and it takes a lot of willpower sometimes. It’s ok if you’re not quite there yet.
• You can always split the toys in half and store one half in the garage and the other half in the house. When the kids start getting bored with what you keep in the house, you can switch them out.

To give you an example of the place we’re currently at, here’s what we kept for our children:

2 sets of Playmobile

1 large tub of Legos

4 dress-up dresses (down from about 8-9)

1 wooden train set

1 tub of Lincoln logs

1 tub of outside toys (balls, bats, Frisbees) stored in the garage

about 6-7 stuffed animals per child (cut in half from what we had before)

books

So that’s just our family, and every family is different. Don’t think your family’s toys have to look like my family’s toys.

Happy weeding out,

Lindsey