Toys! How Do I Minimize and Organize Them?
If you have been around The Goodness Margin for any length of time you might have heard my story, how TOYS pushed me into this journey. I thought we kept things pretty minimal, but all the toys just quickly got out of control!
Fast forward to today. My four-year-old is a perfectly normal sweet girl. She loves all her dress up princess dresses and her dolls and all the accessories. And some days she plays with all of them. ALL. OF. THEM. All at once. But guess what? While it might look like a disaster, it only takes a few minutes to clean it all up. Let me share with you what has worked for us.
A question I often get is, “Aren’t you depriving your children by not allowing them a ton of toys?” Yes. I truly get asked this in some form or another fairly often from well-meaning people. The answer is no. I have found several things to be true.
Kids get overwhelmed just like we do. When you have a room full of toys is can be totally overwhelming to them and you will find that they don’t play as often or as long.
Imagination juices get flowing when they have only a few things to play with. My daughter’s favorite toys are “non-toys.” She takes a blanket from the chair and it becomes the ocean or her picnic. A basket from the closet is her table and her dolls are her friends. I have found this to be so true for my kids. If they only have a few things, they play longer.
We are very careful about what toys we bring in the house, what we buy our kids, and how often we purge. This works great for our family!
So let’s talk about minimizing toys.
If you are just getting started, the first step will be for you to bring them all out into one place. ALL the toys from all over the house in one pile will help you see what you have and how much you have.
Quickly take out anything that is broken or has missing pieces and discard that.
Next, rather than focusing on what you are getting rid of, pick the favorites. What are the things your kids play with? Start there.
Let the rest go. If you feel like it’s a toy you need to save for later, maybe it’s too old for the child now, put it up and save it. If you are having trouble letting some of them go, pack them in a box and put it in storage. Just set a reminder to go back and see if you need it in 90 days.
For maintaining minimal toys, I encourage the “one in, one out” rule. When Elsie gets a new princess dress, let’s see which one we need to let go. Usually, there is one that’s just too small. This becomes a habit and your kids get used to, just like any other habit you create in your home.
Now for organizing! Another wonderful benefit to minimalism is that organizing is so simple. The fewer things you have, the easier it is to organize.
Here are a few pointers for organizing toys:
Don’t make it too complicated. My son loves Legos and once we thought it would be a good idea to organize them by color. It looked beautiful! But as you can imagine, the first time he was “searching for the ONE piece” it was once again just a pile of Legos. To sort them back into colors each time he played with them would result in a very long clean up session (aka - Mama has to help.) Make it simple! We now just keep all the Legos in big bins that are really easy to clean.
Decide the spaces toys will stay in. We keep a few baskets in her room - Dress up, miscellaneous, and stuffed animals. Downstairs in a closet, we have blocks and puzzles. She can’t reach these on her own, so she has to ask. In the same closet, she has access to a miscellaneous basket and her Little People. If she’s upstairs or downstairs playing she only has 2 baskets to clean up. This makes it so simple!
Start young with your kids by teaching them that regularly purging toys is something we do often. We take care of what we have, but when we no longer use it we pass it on to someone else. You can give these away to someone who has a younger child or you can donate them to a shelter. Make your kids a part of this process and you will help them develop a great life long habit!
No matter the age of your child, after you minimize, organizing is so easy!
I do want to share 2 quick tips with you.
The “Random Basket.” This is something I have just started to implement. My daughter used to dump out her miscellaneous basket and grab the few toys she played with a lot and I would find myself consistently seeing the same random things on the floor. You know these items; the cheap plastic toy from the Happy Meal or another tiny prize toy from school. I started grabbing these and sticking them in this “Random Basket” that was at the top of her closet. She can’t reach this and in the course of one month, she only asked me to help her find one thing that I knew was in the basket. While I do recommend getting your kids involved in the purging process, if they are young it is ok for you to discard things you know they don’t play with. So after the course of a little bit of time, I will add these things to the donate bin. This one little tip has drastically eliminated the extra things laying around after she picks up her toys.
The “Toys For Later Basket".” This basket is also at the top of her closet. This contains toys or art kits that I can grab for a trip or if I need a special toy. This is a great way to keep your kids from getting bored with their toys quickly after a birthday or Christmas. I take some of the things and stash them here and then if we are taking a trip or if I have a conference to go to and she’s tagging along I grab this and she has a surprise in her backpack!
We have been on this journey for about 2 years now and the freedom I feel from toys is immense. I used to feel an overwhelming dread when I walked into a room to see all the baskets dumped out. Now I don’t feel that way! I know that any toy mess will take 5 minutes or less to clean up. Try it! I know you will like it! :)