Transform your home by de-cluttering your kids toys. Learn this simple method to minimize toy clutter and enjoy a more peaceful and relaxing home.
Ask any mom of little ones what they spend the most time cleaning up each day and I would be willing to bet the answer would be, “Toys!”
I hear you mama but did you know it doesn’t have to be this way? There is a way that your children can enjoy hours of creative playtime without an abundance of toys and without you having to spend precious time cleaning up after them each day. Learn how to easily minimize toy clutter in your home with the simple and efficient steps below.
A Minimalist Lifestyle
I began living a minimalist lifestyle when I was single and kid free. This made a minimalist lifestyle change much simpler to achieve because there was only me, myself and I to consult. When I married my husband we began growing in minimalism together and creating the type of simple home we both imagined. When we had kids I knew our minimalist journey was about to evolve again.
Society suggests that when you have children it is pretty much inevitable that you will need/have A LOT of stuff. I beg to differ. Having children has brought a lot of joy into our lives but it hasn’t brought a lot of stuff. I will share with you how our family has managed to minimize toy clutter and keep it under control. Let me explain how you too can implement these simple steps in your own life.
Why Should You Minimize Toy Clutter in Your Home?
There are several reasons why I choose to keep toys at a minimum in our home.
- Less toys in a child’s environment encourages more imaginative play. I want my children to enjoy playing. I want them to be creative and to use their imaginations. When children aren’t overwhelmed and overstimulated by toy clutter they are able to truly play as children should.
- Minimizing toy clutter makes me a better parent. Fewer toys in our home makes me a less stressed parent. I spend less time straightening up and more time being present with my children.
- Fewer toys in the home is character building. By having fewer toys children are taught to appreciate and care for what they have. They are also capable of cleaning up on their own because the amount of toys they have doesn’t overwhelm them.
Are you ready to learn how you too can minimize toy clutter and enjoy a more peaceful home? Let’s get started!
How to Minimize Toy Clutter
1. Purge
There’s no way around it. If you want to experience the joy of an uncluttered home with minimal toys, the first step is to purge. What I suggest is to start by going through all of the toys in your home and separating the toys into three categories:
- Keep (for now)
- Broken
- No longer played with
Once you have divided your total toy inventory into these three categories set the “keep” items to the side to address later. The broken and aged out of toys are your “low hanging fruit” when it comes to removing clutter. Go ahead and throw the broken toys into the trash and gather the toys that are no longer played with and put them in a bag to donate.
Quick tip: don’t leave the donate bag in your house. Little hands will find it. Once you have completed the task of gathering the toys, take the bag immediately to your car to be donated the next time you are out and about
2. Involve Your Kids in the Decision Making
When it comes to minimizing my kids toys I like to involve them in the process. It is much more successful and rewarding this way. I currently have a five year old, a two year old and a six month old. In some ways having younger kids makes minimizing toys easier and in other ways more challenging.
In our home I make it a priority to talk to our kids (my five year old currently) about the value of simplicity and how we often enjoy things more when we have less. Children are much smarter than we give them credit for. Because of these conversations my children are often willing to part with some of their toys of their own free will.
However, if minimizing toy clutter is a new concept for your family and you are concerned with how your children will respond, here is what I suggest.
Ask your kids if there are any toys they would like to get rid of. My kids often surprise me with the toys they are willing to part with. Another questions that I ask my kids when it’s time to minimize is, “are there any toys that you would like to give to another kid for them to enjoy?” My son has surprised me many times by randomly coming up to me and saying he would like to give a toy to another kid.
3. Choose Quality Toys
More than likely after the initial two steps of purging and asking your kids which toys they would like to part with you will still be left with too many toys. Evaluate your “keep” pile and only keep out the toys that truly encourage imaginative play. These are toys that are not single purpose toys. Some examples are:
- Blocks
- Legos
- Magnatiles
- Kitchen and Pretend Food
- Dress up clothes
- Toy instruments
- Books
- Art supplies
Once you have decided which toys to keep out as accessible toys for your little ones, place the other toys in a storage bin or bag. There are two options as to how you can handle these toys.
Rotate
If you aren’t ready to get rid of the stored away toys or are afraid your children will ask for them you can create a simple toy rotation. A toy rotation is when you store toys away that your children don’t currently play with and then pull out a few “new” stored away toys for them to enjoy a few months from now. This way you are always keeping their toys fresh and exciting.
Donate
I will be honest, storing toys away is not the option that I personally choose. The likelihood of toys becoming cluttered again increases when they are just stored away and I don’t want to have storage containers full of things that we do not look at or use for months at a time. In our home we stick with quality toys that encourage imaginative play and we simply donate the rest.
There have been a couple of times when my child has asked about where a certain toy went. I am always honest with him and explain that I got rid of it because we weren’t playing with it anymore. He might be “sad” for about 2.5 seconds but then he moves on and plays with the toys he has.
Remember, when de-cluttering your kids toys, you are the parent. You are the one that has to make the hard decisions on what to get rid of for the overall benefit of your children. You are responsible for creating an environment of peace and joy in your home and this involves removing the excess from your space.
How to Deal with Toy Creep
Once you have reached the point of having a clutter free toy room or living space with a minimal amount of toys, you might think your work is done. Oh how I wish this was the case but sadly no. Keeping a minimalist home is a project that you must maintain. The good news is, the initial work of removing and minimizing toys is the hard work. Maintaining a clutter free environment is pretty simple once you’ve strengthened your de-cluttering muscle.
Toy creep is a real problem. Whether it’s from birthdays, Christmas, or a “just because” gift from a family member. You as the parent will definitely have to stay on top of the influx that will slowly creep back into your home.
Here are a couple of ways we handle toy creep in our home:
- If the toy is a “one day wonder” we let them play with it until the all of the fun is over. You know the kind of toy I’m talking about. Those cheap toys that are broken before the week is over. When these types of toys come into our home we let our kids enjoy them and then we throw them away when they break or donate them when the wonder has passed.
- If the toy is more of a long term toy then we implement the “one in, one out” rule. This is when we ask our kids to choose a toy that they would be willing to part with to make room for their new toy.
Create Toy Boundaries
Even when you minimize toy clutter you still must create boundaries around how toys are played with within your home. In our home we don’t have a playroom so the kids can play in their bedrooms or they bring their toys into our living room. Because toys are coming into our family’s main living area we have created some boundaries around toys so that our space doesn’t feel chaotic.
- If my kids pull out a toy to play with, such as legos, they have to clean that toy up before they can pull out another toy that involves a lot of pieces.
- We have two resets a day. Before nap time and bedtime they have to straighten up their rooms and the living room. My husband and I assist them a little during this process because of their ages but the majority of the cleaning is done by them. Our clean up time is 10 minutes tops.
- I store most of their toys on shelves in their closet’s so that my children have to ask me to get them down. (with the exception of legos and magnatiles) This boundary helps me to enforce the clean up rule before another toy is brought out.
Okay mama, you’ve read what it takes to reduce toy clutter in your home. You can do it, I believe in you!
It’s time to put in the hard work to transform your home into a space of peace. By reducing toy clutter your role as a homemaker will be more enjoyable and your children will thank you.
Comment below and let me know all about how you de-cluttered the toys in your home!
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