When my hubs and I started talking about having babies one of the things we discusses was TOYS. Matt mentioned that he would like if our house didn't look like a toys store and would love if the living room wasn't overtaken by toys. I agreed and thought that was a reasonable request. Thus, the "centers" began.
With just Maggie, our 2 bedroom 1 bathroom house was easy to keep clear of too many toys. Over the past 3 years we've double the size of our house and family. Here are a few key things we've set in place to organize and minimize the TOY craziness of life with kids. These tips are to know what toys to keep, which to share, how to maintain a pick-up home quickly while allowing your child to help in the process as well as instilling in them some independence.
- We purposely keep very few toys. We purge so often that it's often the 'talk' among relatives if their toy will make the cut {sorry guys!}. We want to keep it simple. Here is the criteria for keeping a toy: educational either physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. There are so many kids in this world that have nothing, we don't need to hoard crazy amounts of toys. Why not share!?
- We attempt to be purposeful about toys we have. We generally don't do Happy Meal toys, stuffed things, or small pieces. We enjoy basic things that can be used in a variety of play arenas {ie blocks- used from staking, pretend furniture, to detailed cities layouts; dolls- comfort, pretend friend, to parenting}. I will be sharing more about skill building through centers next week. We don't buy toys. Well, let me explain that one. Relatives and friends will more than likely always provide plenty of toys for our children and we do get our children 1 toy for holidays {mainly Christmas/Birthday...usually}.
-
We have chosen not to have toys in our children's rooms so they know bedrooms are just for sleeping. Providing your child with a restful environment that is peaceful, dark, quiet, and almost boring is the best way to encourage good sleeping.
-
We have had many ways to organize the toys. We used to have "adult colored" baskets of toys in the living room but they were easily slipped under the coffee table or off to the corner. When we moved into our current home and had the HUGE blessing of a playroom we still stuck with baskets but they are now there are more of them {as are there more children} and they divided more specifically.
-
We rotate toys so our children stay interested in what they have and so there aren't too many scattered around the house. We never put all new toys out after a holiday. A couple are places among the other toys, a few older toys as well as the rest of the new toys are put into a closet and rotated out later. Some times our children have been know to be "grounded" from a specific toys for being selfish with it, or for mismanagement such as not it cleaning up when ask or playing with it rough or inappropriately.
Hope these are some practical hints to help you manage the Toy Monster that eeks into everyone's house the moment you find out your pregnant ;o) If you have any awesome ideas, we'd LOVE to hear them.
NOTE: We are about to transition to a new {smaller} home so we'll see what kind of organization comes with that and keep ya update!
Return for 5 Days of Organizing & Cleaning TOYS into centers!!!
I love your posts about your day to day “parenting in the trenches.” I love that they make me reflect on what we did, how we handled things and what I’d do differently if we had it to do over. I see so much of who Paul and I were when we had young ones in you guys and I love that you are so deliberate in your parenting choices. Lets face it, we are not “raising children”, our end goal is not to end up with adult age children, our goal is to train them up into adults. Hopefully Christ centered adults, but the Holy Spirit handles part of that. And will if you guys help keep the ground of their hearts fertile.
But as to the “toy” issue… We too did the toy rotation thing… We also did fairly frequent toy purges and narrowed it down to what was in our opinion, reasonable. It seems like “junk” toys multiply in our lives like bunnies when our kids are young. I also found the more strict we were about this stuff with our kids the more people tried to interfere on behalf of our kids… Drove me nuts when “well meaning” people would shower toys on our kids for no apparent reason. We even had people who would bring over bags full of toys (sometimes stuff their children had out grown and some times even new things that the Lord told them to bless us with.) It drove us nuts because we looked like Grinches by not letting them keep all of it or if we did keep it, putting a lot of it away for later.
That being said, we were able to even get our girls to team up with us. After birthday parties we would tell them it we needed their help making room for the new toys in the play room and would do a toy swap (of equal value… doll for doll, tea set for tea set, etc) and take most of the purges to goodwill. It always amazed me that at time the girls would decide for themselves that some of the new, unopened toys we not ones they would play with.
One year our oldest decided she really only wanted to keep two of the gifts she had received after what had been a huge party. (she was seven) so we had a pile of 20-25 new, unopened toys to give away. After a few phone calls we found out that the battered woman’s shelter had an urgent need and we could drop them off at the police station and they would take them over. The officers were so touched they insisted they treat all of us to pizza for dinner, right there at the station. This left a huge impression on both of the girls who both decided the next year to actually ask their guests to bring new, unwrapped toys to their parties (for boys or girls) for this very purpose. Some people brought them two toys, one to donate and one for them, but they were so convicted all the toys went to the police station. We never had another “pizza party” there, but it didn’t matter, they have both turned into joyful givers.
As far as buying toys for the girls, we did buy them some toys, because we knew what kind of toys we wanted them to have. (Quality, open ended, “creative play” encouraging toys.) And some family members took the hint and started buying the same kinds of toys. Others started asking us what exactly we wanted for them. My guess is they got tired of seeing us give away their gifts and decided the best way to “make the cut” was to support what we were trying to do. My mother even started taking me with her for Christmas/Birthday shopping or at least calling me from the store before making a purchase.
I think you guys sound like you are doing a great job! I would encourage you to include your kids in the decisions. You may have to guide/direct at first and sometimes let them make small poor choices (deciding to keep a cheap toy, that would break or one they would grow quickly bored with) for them to learn from. In our experience including them creates a rewarding family experience.
THanks for the encouragement! Our children have DEFINATELY helped in the major purges! Maggie even found more toys we’d set back to keep and said, “Well, they don’t have a tea set yet.” It was a brand new set from her Aunt. But I couldn’t squelch the generousity. I explained again that they weren’t coming back home and she still decided that she wanted someone else {who didn’t have toys} to have it. {swoon}
Wow, sorry that was so long! 🙂