Toys!

I feel consumed by my children's TOYS!  They are everywhere (mostly the basement) and it is driving me crazy.

I have tried organization, cajoling, nagging, yelling, cleaning them up myself...and nothing has helped.  Maybe I need to be stricter with the kids, but it is hard to get them to clean up, when their 2 1/2 year old brother tears it apart.

A friend of mine, Christa, took away all of her girls' toys.  All.of.them.  I think she threw them away!  Gasp!  What?  Threw them away?   But all of my money would be wasted...until you stop and think.  Do they really need them?   Do they play with them? 

Here is what she wrote to me:

"I had been thinking about it for months and one day as I was yelling "clean up your toys" I stopped mid sentence, went into their room and had them sit on their beds. I came back with several trash bags and started filling them. I just had them sit there and watch me fill up bags and bags of their toys. They shed a few tears but I literally took everything, old and new. I filled 7 bags!

 

I kept them in my closet for a while and went through and took out sentimental toys and that only filled up half a grocery bag! Once they were showing that they could keep their room clean I slowly gave them a toy from the grocery bag. And those are the only toys that they still have. The WORST part of taking all the toys is that they DIDN'T CARE! I was so annoyed that they didn't even miss them! They just made games up with each other, they play with old cracker boxes, they make up crafts...they don't care about not having toys! I feel like such an idiot for ever buying them any toys past babyhood! We made a descion that we weren't going to to toys for Christmas either. It was awesome. I told them not to ask for toys because it wasn't going to happen. And it was our 1st (of many) Christmas sans toys. The best part of no toys for Christmas was that they actually had to think about things that they needed or want, they became very aware of other things that might be cool to have. Good luck- best thing I ever did!"

 

Wow.  She is a brave woman!  I think that having girls is like that.  With Livi, she could basically care less about most of the toys in our home.  The boys are a bit different.  They love their cars, trains, legos, etc.  They play much more with the toys.

 

With that said, I have started the process.  I went down in to the basement.  Took a HUGE box and started filling it up.  I am about 1/3 done, but you can already tell their is a big difference.  I am taking away most of the smaller toys (Little Pet Shop) and keeping bigger toys, like blocks. 

They will keep puzzles and books and bigger trucks.  Spencer and Mac love cars=they are staying. 

 

I have noticed that we have a lot of "junk" toys.  They are getting pitched.  There are only a few McD's toys we have kept because of their quality.  (ex. Kung Fu Panda figurines)

 

It is a lot of work.  I swept the toys in to a pile in the middle of the basement floor.  From there, I had Spencer grab them, place them in the sorting box and then I would start sorting.  I had the garbage, the huge box and the other shoe-sized bins that the toys had originally been in. 

 

Things started filling up FAST!  We only got part way through, but I figure that is something that I can do over the next day or so. 
*These pictures were taken back in November 2011 during my 21 day organization challenge.  After looking at the basement challenge I stopped.  :)  It seemed like too much to do.  I think after this, I'll be starting back up!