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How many toys do your kids have?

This topic has 45 replies, 19 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 1 month ago by Sara B..

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April 22, 2011 at 2:01 am
LindseyD
Participant
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
April 22, 2011 at 2:57 am
morgrace
Participant
For some reason, getting rid of toys really upsets my son. I’ve said “if you leave it out, it’s gone” and he’s temporarily lost toys due to misbehavior. I purged a bunch of papers a few weeks ago and didn’t know some of the drawings were ones he made just for us. He generates huge amounts of paper and paper scraps etc. It makes a big mess. I bought him a sketchbook hoping to contain the drawings, he still likes to take pages out though. I can understand why he was upset about the drawings, but why toys? He’ll ask about toys I got rid of a year ago, or see something in a photo and ask where it went. I do wonder about the “love languages” idea and if his might be gifts. He went on and on and on about his birthday gifts this year. Which were limited in number, but he said as he opened his board game “I felt a smile in my heart”. At the same time he can be really materialistic and has even told me he “needs” a toy or thing “to be happy”. Gifts are not hugely important to my husband or I, meaning we think they’re nice, but neither one of us would miss them. He’ll ask to visit realitves houses simply because he likes the toys they have there. Or ask to borrow a toy from them. I’ve always limited our stuff and regularly get rid of things. BUt I just have no idea why or where my son has picked up his attitude about “stuff” it certainly didn’t come from us! Any ideas??
April 22, 2011 at 3:00 am
thepinkballerina
Participant
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
April 22, 2011 at 3:01 am
morgrace
Participant
For some reason, getting rid of toys really upsets my son. I’ve said “if you leave it out, it’s gone” and he’s temporarily lost toys due to misbehavior. I purged a bunch of papers a few weeks ago and didn’t know some of the drawings were ones he made just for us. He generates huge amounts of paper and paper scraps etc. It makes a big mess. I bought him a sketchbook hoping to contain the drawings, he still likes to take pages out though. I can understand why he was upset about the drawings, but why toys? He’ll ask about toys I got rid of a year ago, or see something in a photo and ask where it went. I do wonder about the “love languages” idea and if his might be gifts. He went on and on and on about his birthday gifts this year. Which were limited in number, but he said as he opened his board game “I felt a smile in my heart”. At the same time he can be really materialistic and has even told me he “needs” a toy or thing “to be happy”. Gifts are not hugely important to my husband or I, meaning we think they’re nice, but neither one of us would miss them. He’ll ask to visit realitves houses simply because he likes the toys they have there. Or ask to borrow a toy from them. I’ve always limited our stuff and regularly get rid of things. BUt I just have no idea why or where my son has picked up his attitude about “stuff” it certainly didn’t come from us! Any ideas??
April 22, 2011 at 3:24 am
Sherri C.
Member
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.
April 22, 2011 at 3:30 am
AprilMayJune75
Participant
I feel like weeding out toys is a constant thing in our home. I have rid my daughter’s room of a number of twaddly toys, but it still seems like there isn’t enough room (10X10 room, filled with furniture) and I’m trying to decide what still makes the cut. I am making my semi-annual trip to the children’s resale shop in the middle of May, with the last load of plastic toys we own.
DD loves her Schleich animals, wooden lacing beads, Plan Toys dollhouse, wooden blocks, Learning Resources cash register, train set, puzzles, and a dozen board games. (Some are school related, and others just for fun.) I think that she still plays with her Fisher Price table and chair set, and her dolls/doll crib and high chair enough that they will make the cut as well. The play kitchen, art bucket, and easel will also stay another year. I think that when she turns 6 next year, and gets a bit girl bed in her room, a lot of those things will be gone, too.
We have waaaay too many stuffed animals. I have requested that people stop buying them for her, to no avail. We’ve weeded out over half of them, and still have close to 30.
I will say that one great thing related to learning about CM is the discernment that comes along with buying toys. 🙂 Now if only I could get all of the grandparents on board . . .

April
April 22, 2011 at 4:44 pm
botanicalbecky
Member
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!
April 22, 2011 at 5:03 pm
amyjane
Participant
I think it is important for us to be principle driven rather than application driven. I think that often this is a struggle for us moms. Specific ideas are GREAT and they can be useful for some and spur on other ideas for others and then for some they just don’t work. So I would encourage each of us to pursue the principle of simplicity and know that it will look different for each of us. For example I have over 600 tinker toys in my home and some of you may have that many playmobile toys. But my kids play with them every single day and if your kids do the same then I would find a way to organize the VAST array of playmobile toys and enjoy the fact that you have a simple way to bring order to the toys. If you children are playing with them then let them enjoy them and just create a sense of order so that at the end of the day they can easily bring order from the chaos.
Hope that helps…
Amy
April 22, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Richele Baburina
Participant
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
April 22, 2011 at 6:39 pm
amyjane
Participant
Richele, I am always so thankful to hear your insight into all of these great articles that I hope to read one day…if only the moving and settling would stop. I don’t have such a hard time keeping clutter to a minimum because we move so much and well I just get tired of packing it up so I get rid of it :). Thanks for the great insight. I just might have to let the boys give this a try.
Amy
April 23, 2011 at 2:23 am
Mysterious Lady in Pink
Participant
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!
April 23, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Wings2fly
Participant
Thanks for this thread. We are preparing for the next yard sale and going through toys is on the list. I like the idea of organizing into bins kept in the utility room and bring one out at a time in bad weather.
We have many games. I love games and so do the kids. I never thought about a twaddle aspect of them. What games do you consider twaddle?
April 26, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Sara B.
Participant
OK, I’ve gotten rid of the twaddle. And there wasn’t much of it!!!! So most of our toys is just too much stuff in general! How do you pare that down? My dh agrees with me, it’s still too much. Here’s what we have:
Big box of blocks
Small box of Duplo Legos
Smallish box of MegaBlocks
A small baggie of “real” Legos
A set of construction/building things (I don’t know what it’s called, but my 6yo loves these)
Medium box of cars/car rug/racing thing (but you just put the car on it and it goes down the ramp and makes noise – however, they seem to like it – I think)
Big box of dress-up dresses
Bigger box of dress-up accessories (necklaces, crowns, toy cameras, purses, shoes, etc)
Plastic Fisher-Price barn, tractor, large baggie of animals/people
Little People airplane (and people) and car (and people)
Dora doll and accessories
Lincoln Logs
Cash register
Tinker toys
A small box of indoor balls
Bix bin of Barbies
Large box of dinosaurs & accessories
Big box of plastic animals/bugs
1 Littlest Pet Shop set
1 soft cloth manger scene
1 large horse (for dolls to ride on, such as American Girl size or so)
A very small wet-wipe box of little Princesses and accessories (those rubber-y dresses and such that they had at Walmart for awhile – my 4yo LOVES her Princesses)
Building Boards
Viewmaster slide show viewer and slides (I took out the twaddle slides)
A Barbie activity “laptop”

And that’s just the older kids’ stuff, and not the toddler’s! (I did get rid of a bunch of his toys today, though.) I know that’s way too much stuff. Any tips to pare this down some more?
April 26, 2011 at 11:04 pm
6boys1girl
Participant
Sara,
Just my thoughts here. It seems like the “car racing thingy” may be twaddly. You also have a lot of building type toys (legos, dupos, megablocks, tinkertoys, lincoln logs, blocks) so maybe see which they enjoy the most and get rid of a chunk of those.
Otherwise I would just look at what they play with and get rid of the stuff they don’t play with as much. OR you could give them a limit. Have them pick 2 to keep and then one to get rid of or something like that until it’s to a level you like.
Another idea is to put a few in the car for travel times. The viewmaster, soft cloth manger scene, Barbie “laptop” (depending on noise level), littlest pet shop set (possibly-depends on how many pieces, esp small ones) would work for this. This would limit the amount in the house, give them something to do in the car and also help with the taking toys in and out issues that can arise.
-Rebecca
April 27, 2011 at 2:00 am
LindseyD
Participant
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

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