Overwhelmed too many toys? How To Declutter Toys + Tips To Get Kids To Help!

[@hemofhisgarment4109]

I have six children 10 down to two years old... my oldest two, a girl and a boy, have hoarding tendencies! They have a hard time parting with toys. While the other 4 are more generous with donating or throwing away if its broken toy. I keep a decent size cubby shelf in the one bedroom with 9 medium sized baskets. 90% of their toys are in those, with castles in the closet...my daughter has a small bedroom where she keeps her toys. About 2x a year i give them a garbage bag that must be filled with donate toys. Another bag for garbage. Everyone appreciates the declutterd space once its all said and done, and i cant recall them ever asking for a missing toy after its been Donated. We have big families on both my husband side and my side who love giving gifts. 6 birthdays a year, then Christmas, we have a big increase in toys so the yearly declutter is absolutely necessarily

[@theculturedkidlanguages]

Your tips for decluttering toys are so practical and make the process seem manageable. Thanks for sharing your wisdom on how to declutter and organize!

[@theconfusedmom]

Once you set up the system the maintenance is a breeze! And it’s great watching my 5 year old decide what to keep or toss independently now, even when it comes to cards and art she used to hoard.

[@adunne1104]

I just got those zipper bags, too. So amazing getting rid of all the Lego boxes! I still saved all the manuals so we can assemble again and again. How do you keep the kids from dumping their bins? Mine are notorious bin dumpers.

[@theconfusedmom]

Honestly there's so many situations to this question haha but here are a few approaches: Basically, knowing they'll dump, stay really close and when you see them go to do it, stop them by gentle placing your hand on theirs and saying something like "I see you want to dump the bin. Are you looking for something?" And if they say no say, "ok well we don't dump toys on the floor, if you're having a hard time with that, I can put the bi away and we can try again later." then follow through Another thing is asking yourself, "does it really matter if they dump the bins? What bothers me about this?" If it's cleaning up the mess, then it's a simple rule: you dump, you clean. And they cna't go onto other activities until everything is cleaned up. Of course do it with love/help if they are actually doing it. But teaching them the cause-and-effect of their choices and talking with them. If it's that they dump and aren't playing, then i'd put the bins away. Another option is only having 1 bin out at a time, so you can work with the above concepts until everyone gets on the same page. We generally let them dump - especially since it's how i personally look for things - but it's about the clean up. And we have multiple clean ups a day usually.

[@possumprince]

I will say, be careful with throwing kids' belongings out. My mother did that to me pretty often when I was young and it lead to me having some hoarding behaviours as an adult that it took me years to work through. It made me feel really anxious and almost territorial over my belongings/desperate for any kind of control over my environment, and made me implicitly associate decluttering with punishment. Even when she tried to frame throwing my stuff out as a natural consequence, it still just felt like a punishment the same way her hitting me did (my immature child logic was "This isn't natural at all. My toys wouldn't be in the trash if my mean old mom didn't put them in there.") Granted, she did this through a very cold and authoritarian parenting style and lots of screaming, so it may have very different effects when implemented more gently like you are. Just like, use this strategy with caution and keep an eye on your kids to watch for signs of anxiety around their possessions.

[@theconfusedmom]

Thank you for sharing this