Purging Your Child’s Toys

Posted by joy

12 Jul

Shocking Truth #1:

No matter how many limits you put on the playthings that enter your home, you will find yourself amazed by how the toy paraphernalia builds up.

Shocking truth #2:

Although you may beg people not to shower your tiny infant with a million rattles, shiny singing doodads and plastic xylophones, they will. Then they will do it again annually.

Shocking truth #3:

Your child will play with just ten to twenty percent of her toys.

Am I wrong? I hope so, but in our household we have been amazed by the sheer quantity of stuff that entered our lives with our children’s arrival. I co-wrote The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, a book in which we clearly state that voluntary simplicity is the way to go with baby for a myriad of economic and environmental reasons. And yet, somehow gifts found their way into our lives and my son’s room was overrun with clutter.

What’s the magic answer for toy purging? For us it was talking about one (hypothetical) child who doesn’t get playthings because his family can’t afford it. We talk about what he might like, and how happy he’ll be to get it. If my son wants to give this imaginary boy toys but feels that he can’t get rid of them himself, he’ll even let his dad sort through the toys that aren’t being played with so that we can ship them off to Goodwill.

We also do a toy rotation, so that the items he doesn’t want to play with can be shifted out every month or so. It feels like he’s constantly getting new toys and there’s less to trip over and clean up in his bedroom.

As for the limiting of the gifts, for our baby we specifically asked for no presents at her first birthday party and will probably limit gifts for her until she’s about three and can actually know she’s getting something. For our son, we do ask family for gift certificates to children’s museums or swimming so that we can have experiences instead of stuff. It doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try!

Any other ideas? Have any of you had success with actually keeping the wave of shiny new toys at bay in those first few years?

Filed under: Baby Care, Baby Gear, Eco-nomical Baby Guide, Family Life, General, Living Simply, The Green Household

RSS feed for comments on this post

7 Responses for "Purging Your Child’s Toys"

Melanie July 12th, 2010 at 8:03 am 1
For those of you want to be “green,” check out the Just Between Friends (JBF) seasonal sales events. They are nationwide in 22 or more states. These events offer you a way to sell your child’s toys, clothes, baby gear and so much more and make 65-70% back on these items. It is recycling at its best! Shoppers enjoy prices of 30-90% off on quality new and gently used items. Items are inspected for quality and recalls. Volunteers, consignors, and first-time moms shop the exclusive presale. Each JBF event location supports a community non-profit charity. Hope someone can find and attend one of these great events. You won’t believe the great deals you can get.
Larisa July 12th, 2010 at 8:54 am 2
Our problem is not so much the gift toys but our own addiction to Goodwill and other thrift stores! Now that our son is 4 we’ve instituted a policy that if he wants to get a new car at Goodwill, he needs to pick one from his collection to donate before we go into the store. At least it keeps the numbers at bay.

Also, if I notice that he doesn’t ever play with certain toys, I find new homes for them by giving to friends, selling through a moms’ mailing list, or donating to Goodwill.

I do agree that before the age of 3 kids don’t really understand presents; it’s fun to have a couple of things for them to open at Christmas/birthdays but we typically ask for books as gifts–because you really can’t have too many of those for a child!
Angela Vierling-Claassen July 12th, 2010 at 9:34 am 3
Like most other parents, we also struggle with the battle against stuff. We use some of the same strategies. No gifts at kids birthday parties (and we’ll also be limiting parties to every-other year after this year — on alternate years it’s a family time with perhaps one friend invited to do the family activity). We get the kids very very few gifts ourselves, and try to get family to focus on small items, needed items like clothes, or items that won’t clutter up our home.

We’ve also recently decided to try (the whole family) to take a positive “stewardship” approach to our material goods. We don’t want our kids to just get good at throwing things out as a way to stem the tide, we also want them to take care of their possessions and to think of their playthings as long-term investments. We’ve started to think about how to get family on board with getting gifts that will last through many seasons and that are high enough quality that we’ll be proud to pass them on after our kids are through with them.

I’d love to hear more people’s thoughts about how to deal with all of the stuff — we have a very small space and with two kids now we just can’t afford to let it get out of control (and I’m afraid we are only at the beginning of the difficulty!)
Sarah July 12th, 2010 at 8:06 pm 4
We struggle with clutter too… a lot of it seems to be small, but oh-so-important-to-the-six-year-old things, like hairbows, little plastic trinkets, cards and letters she gets from friends, etc. I have had success reducing the clutter by having her trade in a bunch of little plastic-y things for something she wants- a silver charm for her charm bracelet or the like. Something that is of better quality and more meaningful than a bunch of plastic. Also, letting her take pictures of things before she donates them helps.

We haven’t done this yet, but next year we plan to ask for toys to donate to the local children’s hospital for her birthday. She will still have the joy of opening them, but then we can donate a bunch of new stuff to the Child Life program. Win-win!
Betsy July 13th, 2010 at 1:36 pm 5
We rotate toys too. And we still have too many. We’ve received many many hand-me-downs. I purged a bunch of junkier stuff (unknown plastics, etc.) when we moved. My toddler also just learned to say “mine, mine” to his baby sister. Not so charming. I’m kind of possessive myself, I’ve discovered, and wonder how much nature vs. nurture goes into the hoarding impulse. Sometimes I wish I lived in a commune.
Jen July 24th, 2010 at 8:32 am 6
We have done a good job at keeping the toys out of the house in the first year. We actually don’t have too much at all. It helped that for Christmas he got mostly clothes and books. We have asked people to not give toys for his upcoming birthday because I know we would get a lot of huge things that he just doesn’t need.

We plan on doing the 1 in 1 out rule.
Eileen August 4th, 2010 at 11:01 pm 7
I was so proud of my little guy yesterday. I have been having my kids purge their toys since they were old enough to talk and they are to the point where it is initiated by them. His younger cousin was at our house enjoying the duplo that my son largely ignores for the lego these days. When it was time for his cousin to leave and he started to fuss because he wasn’t done playing, I took my son to the side and asked him “do you think we should just give him the duplo”? Without thinking twice he said, “yeah, let’s do that, that’s a great idea.” And as they were leaving with the new-to-them duplo set, my sister was already having my nephew think of which toy he would get rid of to make room for the new ones. I have to add that over half of these duplo had been purchased at a garage sale 4 years previous and were still in perfect condition. Quality toys are worth it! My kids both way prefer an easy to clean room over toys they never play with.