How To Manage Toys - A System That Really Works!
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by toys? Toys are actually what sent me down this path of minimalism. I was overwhelmed by my kids’ toys! And if we feel overwhelmed, imagine how our kids feel. We ask them to clean their rooms, but it would take us, an adult, a full hour. So how can we expect our kids to clean that up?
We started with minimizing the toys in our home. We only kept what she actually loved and played with. However, over time my daughter has grown and she has a few more interests. I have tried out a few things and over the last year I have a found a system that works really well! She gets to keep the toys she loves, but there is an easy system that allows her toys to be manageable by her.
Here is how this works.
First, we took all of the toys from her room and put them all in our landing area. You could use another room for this, but I highly recommend taking them OUT of the child’s room.
Next, we went through each item quickly and put it in one of 3 piles. Keep, Donate, Maybe. Try to keep as little as possible from going in the “Maybe” pile. This is only to keep your child from getting stuck on one item. Immediately bag up the donate pile and put it in your car. Trust me on this.
Grab the Keep pile and start sorting the toys by categories. I use baskets similar to THESE to separate her categories. She is 7 so her categories are things like: Kitchen, Lego, Doll, and Dress Up. Choose what categories work for your child. If you have a miscellaneous item that doesn’t fit in a category, put it to the side. We always end up with a small miscellaneous basket.
My daughter loves how her room looks when it’s clean. Be sure that your child’s room is clean before you start putting things back. This helps them enjoy the reward of their labor. But don’t put all the baskets back in their room. This is where my system comes in. Only put back the baskets that they can handle cleaning up. For us, I have found that the magic number is 2. She keeps 2 baskets in her room.
Store the remaining baskets elsewhere. We have an attic area that goes out of our master closet. I keep her the baskets here. She will come to me and say “Mom, I want to trade my kitchen basket for the doll basket.” At this point she knows she just needs to have that basket all packed up and we will swap them out. She has gotten so used to this system that she will even ask and then swap out her own baskets.
I have found this system to work really well for our family. This creates a manageable space and she can see what she really plays with. Right before Christmas she decided all on her own to donate the contents of an entire basket because she knew Christmas was coming. Her little (then only 6 year old) brain already understood that she enjoyed her toys being manageable.