Day 13 - Toys
If the playroom or bedrooms in your home are so cluttered that there isn’t any room to play - this is the blog for you. This is a great opportunity to get your family involved in the decluttering too! If you don’t have kids or toys in your house you can choose something else to declutter today.
If you’ve been decluttering other areas of your home over the past few days your kids have probably noticed. They see you choosing to keep what is important and donating things that others can benefit from. When they see you decluttering they will likely recognize the habit and be more likely to participate too. BUT - I know it is not always that easy.
Kids love their toys right? Especially when you start talking about getting rid of some. Suddenly they remember that every toy is their favorite toy. How dare you suggest they get rid of any of the 285,340,872 favorite toys they have!
You know what is best for your family. Some of your kids would benefit from being part of the decluttering process and some would not. Some would hinder you from making any progress. You decide what will work for your family. Don’t be tempted to compare what works for you with what works for someone else.
If you want to involve your kids in the decluttering process, I suggest you have them help you start out with sorting!
Keep in mind - some of you REALLY struggled to purge your shoe collection or your skin-care cabinet. Your kids care about their things too. This may be hard for some of them to understand. I suggest you explain WHY you are doing what you’re doing instead of just forcing it.
Bring all of the toys into one area.
Sort into categories.
Cars, games, puzzles, dolls, books, electronics, action figures, stuffed animals, arts and crafts, dress-up/imagination, balls, blocks, outdoor, educational, etc.
Take a deep breath - you can do it!
Dragging everything out can be VERY overwhelming.
Honestly - that’s why it is part of the process. It allows you see everything you have and hopefully helps you realize you don’t need to keep it all in your home.
If your kids are helping, at this point they are probably going to be tempted to play with things they haven’t seen in a while. Don’t let this derail you. Try to stay on task or let them take a break to do something structured that will move their focus from the heaps of toys in the playroom!
PURGE
More sorting!
Keep, Trash, Donate, Repair, Rotate
Keep: toys you are planning to keep out for your kids to continue playing with
Trash: toys that are broken beyond repair, not in good enough condition to donate, etc.
Donate: toys your kids are no longer interested in, duplicates, and toys they have outgrown that still have some life left in them
You can use this time to teach some valuable lessons about helping others in need or less fortunate.
Repair: toys that need minor repairs (batteries, glue, etc.)
Rotate: toys that you are going to box up and put away for a few months.
I really like this concept! It helps with the clutter in your home and when you rotate a stored toy back into the mix it’s like a new toy to your kids! Just remember, rotation ratio should be 1:1. One toy rotates back into the play room and one rotates into storage.
Do you REALLY want to see a difference? Reduce what you have by half!
Or if you are not ready for that HUGE leap then just go through each toy and decide whether to keep, trash, donate, repair, or rotate.
At the end of this step you will have touched everything at least twice in the sorting process. If you still have too much, do another round of purging.
Clean
Now is a great time to disinfect. Wipe down toys, toy boxes, shelves, bins, etc.
Organize
Evaluate your space & get an idea of where everything should go before you start putting things back.
Involving your kids in this process could make the clean-up times in the future much easier!
If you have storage bins, label them! You can label with pictures and words depending on the age of your children.
Try to put things back in a way that will be easy for your kids to follow too!
If this is too overwhelming for you - message me! I’d love to help you set up a maintainable system that works for your family.
Maintain
Daily clean up
Some of you have been setting a timer for yourself to declutter or clean up certain areas in your home. This will work for your kids too. Set a timer (determined by the mess level) and have your children put everything away in the appropriate place before the timer goes off.
This teaches them great habits of cleaning up that will hopefully last into adulthood!
One In = One Out
When a new toy comes in, one goes out.
Establishing this in the early years is an excellent practice.
It might be good for us to practice this in our closets too! 😉
Suggest other gift ideas
If you don’t want your children to receive toys for every gift-giving occasion share a list of other gift suggestions with family & friends!
Make sure you take before & after pictures of this process.
Hold on to your pictures for the giveaway coming up at the end of this month!