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Email a FriendI am interested to hear how this goes, Arwen! We are dealing with a similar problem here, except I have gotten rid of everything that doesn’t get played with, and there are still too many toys! The girls are good about rotating what they play with, so it’s difficult to get rid of any one thing. For a few weeks they will play just with their baby dolls, then the play kitchen for a while, etc. etc. The main problem is that each of these sets of toys has WAY too many parts. Once they’ve gotten them all out, they get overwhelmed by the mess. Maybe instead of trying to get rid of types of toys, I should pare down what they have in each set. Fewer doll clothes, fewer play dishes (which I just weeded through, but I think I need to do MORE) more creativity? I guess we’ll see!
Buried by Toys
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Homemaking on Monday, September 19, 2011 7:25 PM
Lately, I’ve been pondering the Toy Problem.
I try to begin by rolling my eyes at myself. We’re so fortunate that our problem is an excess of stuff, when we could be having to worry about feeding or clothing or housing our family. The Too Many Toys problem is not a Problem in the real sense.
But still, we have MANY toys. The playroom is full enough that the kids rarely play in there. Most of our once novel-for-the-moment items never see playtime at all. In January we packed away a third of the toys and organized things so that we have ample storage for all the toys. But still, most of them go ignored while Camilla and Blaise spend a happy hour sliding down the stairs on an old blanket.
We need a better solution.
Last month a friend wrote about how her children, bored by fancy water parks, played happily in a no-frills neighborhood pool. Do children fair better with fewer elaborate attempts to entertain them, she wondered? The comments consensus seemed to be that they do.
I don’t have much time or energy to make up games for Camilla and Blaise these days, and I have noticed them playing better, longer, and more creatively together since the twins were born. Now, as I think about the Toy Problem, I’m wondering if the theory will apply to toys.
We have some good, simple toys but we have a lot of fancier things too, with multiple pointless parts. The children are always excited about these toys when they’re brand-new, but they fall out of favor quickly.
Would it work, I wonder, to toss the fancy stuff and have only a small number of simpler things? I’ve pitched this idea to my husband and he’s resistant, but I think I’ve convinced him to try it temporarily. We can store the toys and bring them back out if the kids miss them too much.
This is my preliminary list of stuff we’ll keep in our new-and-improved, pared-down playroom:
1. Set of wooden building blocks. It’s a good set, plenty for both the kids to use together.
2. Wooden train set. Just tracks and cars; I already stored all the small choke-able accessories years ago. Blaise loves this set way too much to part with it.
3. Bin of dress up clothes. This is a smallish box of various hats, dresses, etc. We get lots of creative play from this box, but if the simple-toy experiment goes well, I’m also considering replacing it with a set of play silks.
4. A few dolls and stuffed animals and our two doll blankets. I can’t take away their “babies”!
And possibly:
5. A small collection of dishes and play food. This would be culled from our current (huge) collection that goes with our toy kitchen. I’m still dithering on whether to keep the toy kitchen out or pack it away.
I think we’d also begin by storing the other toys within easy reach, so that if we needed to we could add more favorites back into the mix. But I’m so interested to see what would happen if these were the only toys in the play room! Would my kids be happier and more creative there? I suspect they would.
Have you ever tried simplifying your toy collection? What worked and what didn’t? I’d love to hear about your experiences!
Comments
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Yep, I have cut back on the stuff that’s out & accessible.
I have 2 huge bins (opaque - so the kids can’t see thru and be reminded) in the basement, with lids, for the rotation. I also have a couple of recycled pretzel barrels of blocks, lincoln logs, wood stringing beads, big legos, little legos. If the kids are downstairs “helping” me do laundry, they’ll ask to bring something up to play with. I’ll respond with, “Okay, but what are you going to bring down to the bin to take its place?”
It’s arbitrary, though, not a real rotation system. Sometimes it’s just a case of, “I am about to lose it after tripping over ___ for the umpteenth time; therefore, after the kids are in bed, I’m going to rotate that to the basement.”
We have a nice wooden play kitchen & accessories, a toy chest, and also a book nook area. (Books are a whole ‘nother topic!)
I will also share that I am pretty quick to hide & re-gift new baby toys coming in. If it’s still in the box or with tags, if I know my baby would rather play in an empty cardboard diaper box anyway, and if I know that the gift-giver is never going to step foot into my house & ask to see the gift, I don’t even give it rental space in our toy chest - it gets re-wrapped & out it goes!
We own that same set of blocks, and it has seen 6 years of very frequent play. I have actually considered purchasing a second set, but then I would need a different container to hold all of them 
. We have paired down our toys multiple times over the years, and I would say our basics would be blocks, cars, a few dolls/ teddy bears, and duplos. Legos are also immensely popular in our house, but can create a huge mess and have lots of small choking- hazard pieces.
I think the more kids you have, the fewer toys you need - although the more toys you tend to amass somehow. They play more with each other and less with stuff.
Last Christmas Santa came over and cut a hole in the wall on the landing of our basement steps and put in a slide so there’s 2 ways to the basement - steps or slide. Near the slide he also set up a medium sized trampoline on top of 4 layers or rug remnants. That was the best. idea. ever. No pieces to lose and no mess. They play down there constantly. Well, they still make a mess and it’s not perfect, but it’s so much better.
I wish I could figure out this problem myself! Two things seem to hinder me. One is that the favorite toy, Fisher-Price little people (the old kind; we have a few of the newer style and those are pretty much ignored), is parts-intensive. They get played with a ton, for long stretches of time, but there are so many pieces!
The other difficulty I encounter is that dd’s primary love language seems to be gift-giving. This means that she remembers Every. Single. Toy. that she has ever gotten and who gave it to her when. So if I try putting things away to at least rotate out (or try to sneakily give away if no one remembers to ask for them), she invariably notices that something is missing and asks for it. The sole exception has been a Barbie.
But I’m with you on the basic toys; the less noise it makes, the better! And the fewer pieces, the less overwhelming to play with.
The toy problem is one that I’ve been trying to solve for years but with very little success. I go through the toys every few months and cull a few items here and there to donate. Items like stuffed animals are not allowed unless they’re small (think Webkinz size) and even then the quantity allowed is limited.
The wood blocks you linked to are the ones we have. They not only captured my younger daughter’s interest from age two, but they still entertain her and her 10 year old sister now. Those are definite keepers. I’d suggest keeping the toy kitchen. The one we’ve had since my oldest was two still sees a lot of playtime.
I agree with must about everything you said except… Our toy kitchen and food has been played with every single day by four children for 11 years. they have picnics, the older children use the place settings to teach the younger children to set the table, little kids “cook” with me whe. I make dinner. we could not do without our toy kitchen. Also, our little people farm, house, school bus and construction site is a must have. So much creative play from those (although years ago I gave up trying to organize them, they all go in one big tub after playtime). good luck with your efforts to pare down!
I totally agree. The play kitchen and the dollhouse were just PRIME creative toys for our daughter. She simply loved to play all kinds of “home living” things with it. Those were some of the few items I could honestly say we got our money’s worth out of; with just one child that doesn’t happen often.
We had a bad moment a couple weeks ago when my daughter bit me during the bedtime routine. I lost it and took every single toy out of her room. I missed a finger puppet, one stuffed animal that was in the entryway, and the blankets. She played with them the next day for hours. She’s currently earning back her toys and it’s so much nicer with fewer there. Clean up is easier and she entertains herself just fine. Our problem is that we live in such a small apartment we don’t have any place to store unused toys except our bedroom. It is currently covered in stuffed animals.
So the no toy experiment worked well in our house. I just wish I could really get rid of some of the stuffed animals. She knows and plays with every. single. one. I think if any more come in the house then one has to go.
Our toy situation has made me firmly resolved NEVER to buy stuffed animals for people. I feel like I’m torturing the parents 
We got a biggish collapsible hamper and told the kids (three of them) that whatever stuffed animals don’t fit in the hamper are going. And yes, if they want to fit a new one in, an old one has to go. But, my kids rarely play with them anyway.
We always go through toys but a few months I took a lot out, even puzzles. We kept blocks, a max of 5 stuffed animals per child(less encouraged), small basket of hot wheels only about 20 left. We also have a dress up bin, trains and tracks and duplos. We kept the kitchen and pretend food because all 4 still use it daily and we added sheets so they can continue their house/fort building. And we let our oldest keep her jacks. She likes them.
We don’t regret it at all. The only hard part is convincing other well meaning familymembers you are really okay with less toys.
I felt re-invigorated and emboldened after reading Simplicity Parenting because inhave always been a huge fan of simple and few toys. easier to clean, too!
This is a huge issue for me. There are so many toys that I want my son to have because I feel that they’re developmentally beneficial, yet I know that he plays better when there aren’t excessive amounts of toys around. Then there’s the problem of extended family giving him way too many gifts (and we have a small family; I can’t imagine what I would do if I had a big family giving him things). I have learned the hard way that at Christmas, all I get him is stocking stuffers. For his birthday, I get him just one gift. He gets so much from others that it is overkill if I add to it. I have tried to weed through things like stuffed animals; if anything appears to be remotely duplicate, it’s history. But it’s really tough.
I am grateful for a small house which prevents us from accumulating too much stuff. One always fill whatever space one has. Right now all my two boys have (youngest is 9) are legos, wooden blocks, nerf guns, and games. But because I homeschool they also have several fun educational and hobby sets like circuits and gears. And of course we have plenty of craft supplies for building or making whatever they want. We do not have video games which I know is a space-saver for some families. Our parties are always “no gift” parties and when relatives give stuff for Christmas or birthdays, most of it gets donated.
Have you considered trying the 7-day Toy Cure from Ohdeedoh.com. (http://www.ohdeedoh.com/ohdeedoh/toy-cure/the-7day-toy-cure-a-busy-parents-plan-for-editing-down—154233) It is a week-long process to edit/pare down the number of toys you have. It might help get you started!
that’s exactly what came to my mind too. I love that site.
Some toys I would add to the list of must-haves (though my oldest is six, so that makes a difference):
Duplos, legos, doll house, lincoln logs, tinker toys, lots and lots of arts and crafts materials—- love those pull-out drawer bins from sterilite.
Yes, we have A LOT of building systems and it probably isn’t necessary to have them all, but they are practically the only toys my kids play with and it is hard to say no to lincoln logs!
Some things we have done to tame the toys (and we do not have a play room, so it is important):
1. Storage systems from Target—- big rolling bins and those racks with lots of buckets instead of shelves.
2. Every year before Christmas we go through the toys with the kids, and we do the same thing with the outside toys in the spring. They pick one thing they want to keep, and one thing they want to toss. We keep going until I feel like we are down to a reasonable amount.
3. After Christmas, we put away some of the presents they received before even taking them out of the packaging. Some of them get donated (we don’t need two computerized talking dogs) and some get saved for a later date (like, husband is out of town and kids are getting restless).
4. Never, never get happy meals!!
My problem is that I don’t actually buy toys, my mother in law does. Every time she comes over, it is like Christmas. Seriously, at least six new toys. AT LEAST. And, with her visiting about once a month it got waaaaay out of hand a long time ago. She isn’t the kind of person to ask where something is but I feel oddly guilty getting rid of things we haven’t even had that long. But, maybe I just need to accept that some toys are duds and some of them I just hate for their millions of parts.
Similarly though, I have a hard time getting rid of them because I have another kid behind her…seems foolish to get rid of toys that her baby sister might enjoy at some point. But, at the rate of acquisition we just cannot keep them all. We already do the rotate thing, and that works some, but there are still too many.
And the best part? Her favorite tithes days is a giant cardboard box that I made into a house. Gahhhhh!
I am pretty brutal sometimes about what gets kept and what goes. Every few months and especially at Christmas time I assess and sort. Things that don’t get played with are packed up for awhile, if they don’t ask for it back then it gets donated. Dh and I try to limit to one toy/gift (plus 1 book) from us for Christmas and birthday… I really wish our families would do the same (especially since many of our family don’t share our views of what makes a “good” toy and we end up with too many things that are interesting for a day). In our house (2, soon 3, boys), what gets the most use are Duplos, cars, a little kitchen set, and a tool set. (Outside, balls, buckets, paintbrushes, and chalk.) We’re adding a wooden train this Christmas. Stuffed animals are the worst, we have a ton of them and the boys never play with them.
We have pretty simple toys - my children are 3.5, 2.5, and 16 months. We have a dress up basket, a “car” basket, a “ball” basket, play food + kitchen, and then wooden puzzles, wooden blocks (2 sets), wooden train table, and art supplies. My daughter has a bin of barbie dolls also, and of course regular baby dolls & a few stuffed animals. For outside toys, we have a sand table, a slide, tricycles & ride on toys, one of those cozy coupes, and a water hose! I go through their stuff every couple of months and toss/donate whatever we don’t use or when it starts to get overwhelming. They also have a huge book collection. When the batteries die in a toy I put it in my closet for a while to see if they miss it…. so far the answer is nope!
I understand exactly, A’Dell—we don’t buy toys for our kids ever. They are all gifts. Our family lives far away so they love to come with gifts when they get to see the girls. It’s helped a bit to encourage giving them clothes (they’re still too young to have strong opinions or realize that they can choose their own clothes at the store). We never have to buy clothes for our kids because our family loves to give us clothes. It hasn’t completely solved the toy issue but it has cut down. I also do little toy purges and hide them for awhile to see if anyone notices. Then I donate them quietly.
Like many of you, we live hours from family, and side of the family is big on gifts at Birthday/Christmas. After a few big, faddish toys that didn’t get played with much, I have started asking for winter coats, sheets/comforters, etc. They have gotten our kids their bikes, too.
This last Christmas, we ditched gift giving altogether (my siblings and I—- my parents still got gifts for everyone). I lieu of more toys, each family payed their own way to a water park hotel that is half-way in between my family and everyone else. Each couple chipped in to split the cost for my parents as our present to them. Best thing we ever did, and we will do it every year now.
Arwen, if you need help convincing your husband, there is a great book called “Simplicity Parenting” that addresses this very issue. A child pyschologist who worked with children with PTSD in third world war zones moved back to London and began working with upper middle class kids. He saw similiar symptoms to PSTD in these wealthy children due to overexposure to all kinds of stimulus, including toys. His first line of action in a family is to bring in a bunch of black trash bags and take away about 75% of the toys, earning him the nickname, Dr. Trashbag!
Anyway, it was an interesting read and has some intriguing theories and statistics on these types of issues. I can see a dad really liking to see some hard numbers and solid theories on the issue.
I discovered that when my son didn’t constantly have ALL his toys, he appreciated/gave attention to the ones he did have!
I divided up all his “smaller” toys earlier this year into 4 groups or sets. I made sure that each “set” had some blocks, some balls, some cars, at least one puppet, a simple wooden puzzle, peg board, only one electronic toy, etc. I change them out every 1-2 weeks (depending on how much time we’ve had at home and how bored he seems with them). I rotate the larger toys (push/ride toys, shape sorter/stacking rings) that I didn’t have four of at the same time, he just sees them more often. I did leave him his very favorites for all the time: play kitchen, large cardboard blocks, play dustbuster vacuum.
Our book situation has become a deluge, and I’m about to institute the same system with books. I’ll leave out a few absolute favorites (Brown Bear!) and start rotating some of the others that don’t get a lot of attention.
I have a hard time getting our girls to play in their playroom as well. I’ve wondered if too many toys was the problem though we have two boxes worth stored and the playroom is well organized. But my dilemma is how to decide which to keep and which to get rid of. It seems like each child has different favorites and I don’t want to get rid of anyone’s favorites.
To Rosie and Anna… (and any others with kids like theirs)... I don’t *exactly* have a child that I think their primary love language is gift-giving… but I do have a 5 yr old boy with an insanely good memory. (He, for example, LOVES cars…) and with every single matchbox/hot wheels car he has, he knows when he got it, why, (birthday, good behavior, etc) & he notices if it goes missing. I was thinking as I read your comments that for us, when I decided it was time to “pare down” on all the CARS I was stepping on around the house We talked about gift giving as a sign of love… about all the people and kids in the world that needed toys when we had many. We discussed that some kids have NO cars to play with and that they needed to learn to share their toys with those less fortunate. It took awhile for him to understand the concept (also just worked well for me since my little one is really compassionate and empathetic) but then he’d even say, “Mommy I’m going to give away my favorite car for Jesus and those kids who don’t have any”... I,of course, told him he didn’t need to give away his FAVORITE cars, but how about allllll those cars that he rarely drives that aren’t his favorites? We didn’t need that many. Worked well for us- good luck!!
We’ve worked hard to keep the toy clutter/distraction to a dull roar. So far, we have just 1 4 year old son, but we hope to keep the toy quantity basically the same as we expand. We have a similar core list as yours- blocks, train table, kitchen/minimal food/dishes/vacuum. We then have 1 tub of puzzles, a shelf of board games, a few fisher price toys (parking garage, air craft carrier) and a fairly large bin of other miscelaneous toys- trucks, sports toys, plastic dinosaur, etc. My sister in law has an estimate $20,000 worth of toys (her children are ages 6-12) and my husband and I decided that we wanted to try something else for our family. We have insisted on group gifts, gifts of books, magazine subscriptions, or “experience” gifts and my husband and I are committed to only buying gifts that are toys 2x per year, and really keeping that to 1 gift at a time. We are fortunate, we aren’t wealthy, but we are blessed to have our needs met. BUt, I was raised hearing my grandpa say, “Before the war, kids only had 2 toys…thats just how it was…afterwards, kids had toys piled to the ceiling…” Clearly, he valued a minimalist approach.
It’s funny sometimes how we problematize having so much while others worry about how little they have. It’s not really a matter of quantity but quality of toys we surround our kids. I also tend to buy my child quite a lot of toys. Some she enjoys while some are forgotten with a new toy in hand. But I think we have to choose those that can help them develop their potential to the fullest.
In our house, we clean out some of the extra toys in the days leading up to Christmas and birthdays (as we know that those will be the times that we can expect a new pile to show up). We haven’t done this with the 18 month old quite yet, but our 3 1/2 year old (who has now done this twice, at Christmas and his third birthday) has done beautifully with going through his toys and choosing a large trash bag full of them to give to kids who don’t have as much as he does. He’s even been thoughtful enough to choose a few things that he doesn’t want, but wants to keep around for his baby sister. Then, he goes with me to donate the items to a local shelter or hospital. Good lessons learned all around.
One experiment I tried that worked well. . .I let our oldest pick 5 (I think) toys to keep and I packed all the rest in the garage. Each month he was able to go exchange for what 5 toys he wanted that month. It was a lot less mess and the toys got much more use. Now that we have 5 kids, I haven’t been able to keep up with that.
Another trick I heard of was to have a bin for each day of the week full of toys in the garage. Each day the Mom would pull out a bin and that’s what the kids played with. Everything went back in the bin at night and the next day a new bin came out.
I’m with you on basic toys like a ball, a doll, and some blocks though All in all we’re still battling too many toys. It’s just hard to get rid of good toys, especially when they’re gifts. Lately, I’ve taken the approach that if they don’t clean it up it gets packed in the garage. Most of it they didn’t care. Now with fewer they’re more inclined to clean it up.
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I don’t have kids so I can only go by what my parents did growing up. It seems that simple chalk and a jump rope were well used more. Board games weren’t good as we were a small family and none of us really had the time (and my brother and I always fought) to play. When I was really little, I was more happy playing with the large box the toy came in than the toy itself.
As I grew older, I preferred the arts and crafts type. I am living proof that you are never too old for stuffed animals but now I prefer life size (if there was only room for them). I was never much for dolls, though I had a few but rarely played with them.
I always played “office”.
For all of you moms who say your children remember what they have and don’t want to part with anything: It seems to me that it is even more important to teach those children to let go of some of their toys or they will be in danger of becoming pack rats. Detachment from things will be easier if it’s taught at an early age.
with boys from 6 to 18 yrs. I have toys of all ages and stages. I hate things with batteries!!! I long ago learned to let go of what I call “junky” or fad toys and we don’t do most popular collections/theme toys. Still, I look at certain toys and say…when can I finally let that go (plus I currently babysit for 2 young boys who will also still use those “baby/preschool toys”). But I’ve learned the basics are best: wood blocks, legos within reason and kept organized in bins, (got rid of the kinects—-too much more confusion and tiny parts for me and they enjoyed legos better), anything broken gets tossed, lincoln logs were a keeper, sort out the matchbox cars to 1 bin—-you only have 2 hands and how many kids at a time? and those easily broken racetracks—-gone!, relief, most of the remote control vehicles (do they reproduce at night?)—gone!, small set of play dishes in small container with a chefs hat (hey many great chefs are men), one bin of “figures”, a cabinet of classic board games, art supplies, and still many books—keep the faves, classics, and specials, pair down stuffed animals (take pictures of the others for memories and pass them along to donate and “bless” another child with—-that’s how I’ve gotten my kids to part with more things—-we’re blessing others and in order for new stuff to come into our home we need to make room by parting with some of the old!) Think back to preschool/kindtn class—basic toys for imagination and real play, easily sorted and organized, otherwise its overwhelming, wasted and unused (and we do the “regift”/“donate” shelves on new things that come in as duplicates or easily foreseen future clutter!) With less choices but better stuff my guys actually play more and there’s less stress all around. Still my hard to let go: old game systems that cost a fortune (ours/gifted) and the expensive games that accompany them!!!
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