All of the broken toys went straight to the trash. I then went through and took out the toys that I thought were never played with. A tip that worked for me: Take these toys and put them in a box in the garage for a week. Wait and see if your kids mention any of the toys. If you get a “Hey Mom, have you seen my black Spiderman figure?”, discreetly pluck it from the box. If they don’t say anything, they’re none the wiser and send ’em all to Goodwill!
All of the keepers were put in two big baskets that perfectly fit in my coat closet. One basket holds all of the dress-up stuff: costumes, lightsabers, and Nerf guns. The other holds miscellaneous toys like Little People toy sets and footballs.
Feels good to have a hold on the toy situation for now! How do you deal with your kids’ toys? Please share your tips and tricks!
We live in a tiny village in rural Alaska where temperatures reach thirty below for much of the winter months, so toys are key to entertaining my three boys (twins age 5 & the baby age 2). I use huge rubbermaid totes to sort toys (legos, cars, guys, balls) and rotate the totes periodically. I swear, while those totes are hiding in the closet, the boys forget the toys even exist, so when I pull them out, they get SO excited!
I love your closet baskets–I imagine that will make for really easy tidying! I like to sneak away toys and put them in the tentative goodwill pile too–but I usually wait to see if the asking for it back gets intense before I "find" the toy again 🙂
I have such a love/hate relationship with our toys. I'm constantly purging them but I swear they're having babies in the toy boxes! I went the IKEA Expedit route with baskets for all the toys-except for the trains (aahhh all the trains!) and the Legos (when will it end!). I like the baskets because then the boys can take them where they want to play and then (ideally) put them back on the shelf. We're still working on the whole one basket at a time, put it back when you're done thing. It seems like there's always some kind of construction going on that requires two different sets of blocks…..and then some animals….and then some cars…..
Do you have limits on how many toys you keep in the house? Sometimes I feel like my boys have way too many, but then I think maybe it's the right proportion to the amount of boys of the sameish age living together?