Today Simon tackled the boys room and we finally went through the books and got rid of quite a few, next are the toys.
Toys are hard to de-clutter, especially with 4 kids. Some toys are played with, some are not, some are outgrown, some are just being grown into. In any case, we have way too many and the kids are not ready to let go. I don’t know what to do. I used to have an addiction to buying cheap used toys or other things. I found so many great deals but the mess and clutter just grew and grew.
A few years ago I finally decided to make the change. To stop buying, to stop cluttering up the house with stuff that we really didn’t need or wouldn’t use and start getting things under control. Over the last few years we have gotten rid so much stuff, including toys, often by putting them in storage and them having them disappear. Now I can often skip that step and no longer have such an emotional attachment as I used to. Xavier however, is a lot like me and has trouble letting go so it makes things hard at time.
If I could go back, I would have done things differently. I loved when I was at Annie‘s that there were just not many toys. A mess was easy to clean up. I wish that we would have stayed minimalist when it came to that, to everything really. But now that we have them it is such a hard thing to deal with.
Our problem is the bulk of the toys… the Legos, the Playmobils, the Star Wars figurines and ships. All toys that are played with often but all have little pieces that make a playroom look like a dump within the span of a few minutes…
We have tried so many things to keep things under control to no avail. The room is always chaos, and of course, when there is a mess, they are less likely to use the space; and when they use the space, they make a mess. It is a vicious cycle. The boys are in change of cleaning the space, and once in a while we would step in and help. It is too much though, for all of us and we have had enough of the chaos.
So, Today is the day that we are tackling it.
The things that have a home, can keep their home. The rest is up for grabs. We have a bin. A large bin with a top. What can fit in it can stay. The rest will go.
So… how do you keep the toys under control? Who is in charge of cleaning the toys space? How do you dea with kids that have trouble letting go?
My daughter is still very young (almost 3 months), but I have several nieces and nephews that we’ve had to organize toys for here. The thing that seemed to work best with them was deciding a set number of toys that they would choose to get rid of each day, week, or month for however long it took to make things clean again. It gives them time to really think about it and consider what they like playing with and what they can part with.
We don’t have many figurines or lego as the girls haven’t wanted that kind of thing; unlike their brothers who did when they were younger.
What we do have though is mess: dressing up clothes, puzzles, paper, pens, string, glue, bricks, shoes, boots, socks, hankies, books, dollies, play food, dust, dirt and more, all end up on the living room floor.
Almost every day I get the broom out and sweep everything that is on the floor into a pile. Everyone picks out the stuff that can be put away somewhere, then we pick up recyclable stuff and then anything left over gets swept up and put in the bin.
If we have a good clear up one day and we are out for most of the next day we can manage not to do this every day but if we leave it a few days without this kind of serious putting away we all start to hurt ourselves on stuff!
For getting rid of stuff we just talk about how much fun we have had with stuff that people have taken to the charity shop which we have then bought. They ‘get’ that if we give stuff to the charity shop they can enable some other children to be excited to find this toy or that dress too so the journey continues.
I am not a big keeper and routinely dump, donate and recycle things. My girls have no problem letting go too. Usually I pick toy that are not use anymore and get rid of them and try to avoid buying as much as possible. This time of the year is my prefered decluttering toy time. It make room for all the Xmas gifts they will receive anyways and by giving to Optimist Club and such they know some other kid will be able to have a good Xmas too.
We are in the same situation – older children, 4 kids, collection of Lego, playmobile, thomas, etc.
Our informal rule, is only one thing out at once. Lego out – no playmobile etc… if it’s all out at once, it’s a nightmare to clean up.
We also have a small IKEA rug where the kids keep the lego. Their boundary, is to try to keep in all on the carpet. doesn’t always work, but it’s a goal
About once a week we do a full clean up with parental help.
I love you blog, btw… homeschooling family in Ottawa here.
Erin
We have bins for each category with small digital pictures of what’s inside and a label. Helps sorting, reading, and organization skills and my son loves matching things to their bin
@ Megan:
Wow… you are on top of the organization!
@ Erin:
I wish that we could do the only one toy out at a time… the toys here all seem to merge into one big game…
I think I got ahead of myself yesterday and we ended up not doing as much as I wanted. However, it is a lot better than it was. The Lego’s and Playmobils have their space in the drawers under the train table. We skimmed through them to make sure that they would not overflow. The big wooden castle with dragons etc is on the train table and the big bin that I mentioned in my post is now home to the Star Wars ships and figurines and whatever didn’t fit in it went into storage.
There is a small bin for dinos and a small one for a few cars… (we used to be overrun)
and then each of the boys have their own stackable bin with their favourite toys that don’t go into the other big categories. Everything has a place now.
We’ll see how this goes…