Decluttering my kids toys

“Time not toys”

Over the past four years I have discovered that my kids hands down prefer time spent with them over any new toy. The most exciting toy holds nothing to a few minutes of undivided attention.

I have read and listened to multiple books and podcasts on this subject that have encouraged me to stop and think. To think about the negative effects too many toys can have on children. To think about all the time that goes into my child’s toys. Time it took to pay for the toy, time it took to pick out the toy, time it took to buy the toy, time it takes to maintain the toy, time it takes to clean up the toy. What if my kids had fewer toys? I thought about all that time we could regain.

This all provided me with the motivation that I needed to make a change.

My steps to purge…

So I started to purge. My strategy was first to go through anything broken and discard. 

Next I bagged up toys that the kids rarely played with that had zero sentimental value and tucked them into a closet. I gave it six months. At the end of the six months if Anika hadn’t asked for it, I let it go. Anika has yet to ask for any of it.

I created a toy library. This was toys on a separate shelf outside of our playroom. These toys can either be rotated to the simple shelving unit in our playroom or be taken out to play with and then returned to the toy library shelf. This helped reduce the mess that could be created in our playroom at one time. They still make a mess but it can be restored to proper order much quicker now.

What I noticed…

When I reduced our number of toys I saw improvement all around in our kids, although Anika barely seemed to notice they were gone.

The specific improvements I saw where…

1. The kids fought less.

I had to rethink how to handle toys when my son became old enough to play with toys in our house that originally exclusively belonged to Anika. If there was a toy they fought over my initial instinct was to think we needed two of it. The problem with this was they would continue to fight over the same toy and now there were two of them in the house to fight over. My current solution is to tell them if we can’t figure out a way for them to play together with the toy it will go away for a bit. They definitely still fight over toys, but having less toys in general makes this a more infrequent battle.

2. I spent less time cleaning up and more time playing with my kids

This in turn made them less fussy because they were getting more undivided attention from me.

3. The kids appreciated a clean space and in general. 

My daughter made more of an effort to put her stuff away and keep the playroom clean. The one exception that I have noticed about this is when we have playdates. I’m not sure if it is the excitement of having a friend over but stuff seems to just go everywhere. We are working on this.

4. They used the toys that they had left more creatively.

They combined toys in ways they had never done before. The more toys they had the less they played with them and vice versa.

Toys are awesome. I am not anti toys and believe me we still have plenty of toys in our home. We also love a good toy store. We go and play in toy stores all the time, but we try not to bring things home. My kids have just as much fun pushing all the buttons and making all the sounds on the toys in the toy section at Target as they would if we took them home where they quickly lose interest.  I recently listened to an episode of the podcast “The Purpose Show ” where she talked about teaching her kids to appreciate how cool an item is in the store but realizing that it might not need to come into your house. I loved this and thought it was a great way to explain it to kids.

And then came Christmas…

Our home had recently felt like we had achieved hemostasis. There was a good balance of toys. Plenty of backloaded toys and not too many toys that the kids fought over. Then Christmas came and I saw first hand the effect that toys had on my kids.

Anika and Jacob both became extremely territorial of new toys. I heard “mine” come out of Jacob’s mouth frequently and a lot of screaming from Anika for Jacob to stay away from her toys because “they are special”. The fighting was intense. Finally when Jake went over to give Anika a hug and kiss goodnight like he usually does before going to bed and Anika’s (who was currently playing with her new Polly Pocket on her bed) only response to him was to push him away so he didn’t go near her Polly Pocket, I snapped.

I told Anika that I felt sad when I saw the way she treated her brother. I reminded her that all the stuff in our house doesn’t matter…that if our house burned down tomorrow and we lost everything in it, it would be ok as long as our family was safe. She saw how upset I was and she got it. She asked for Jacob to come over again, she gave him a hug and told him she loved him.

Starting again…

The next morning some new toys were put away in the closet or basement. We purged some things all together. Some of their favorite items were proudly displayed in designated spots in our playroom and bedrooms and some were put in empty spots in our toy library to be cycled in and out. Things got better. Those rough couple of days after Christmas showed me first hand that we were on the right track with the steps we have taken to simplify and declutter our lives and we all need to keep moving forward.