Toy Organization

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We are in challenging times. Our generation is being bombarded with advertising messages directed at our children, "pester power". We are bombarded with toys that will promise to educate and develop our child. Toys that have a lot of functions, buttons and lights. No wonder we are all overstimulated when we walk into the play area or our child's bedroom. It is quite mentally disruptive with all of those choices. We've been fooled that if our child has more toys, they will play longer and we can get more things done ourselves as parents, i.e., cleaning, laundry. To say the least, these toys are oversold and over promised. They can be downright harmful to a child's focus. As parents we need to be more attentive to what we set out for our children to play with.

Before I get into that, let's take a minute to talk about play, and playtime. Play is a child's work just like we go to an office to go to work. When children play they develop important life skills. They learn how to behave socially and how to create connections. If there are too many toys in a room a child the child will become overwhelmed. What if you walked into your office and you had seven computers, three iPads, four iPhones? You would be overwhelmed by too many options. Too many options equals choice paralysis. That is possibly how your child feels when they have too many toys to choose from.

Here are a few suggestions for you to think about organizing and decluttering toys. First, go around your house and collect all the toys and put them in one area. Then collect any toys that are age inappropriate, duplicate toys, ugly toys, and toys that are too aggressive or violent, bag them up and put them straight into your car so they are ready to donate (throw away any broken toys and toys with missing pieces). Have your child pick out five of their favorite most precious toys and set those aside, then when you are done purging when your child re-enters the play area they will see their favorite toys straight away and not be upset if they don't see them. If it is easier for you to purge on your own, you can go through the toys when the children aren't around to be more productive. Depending on your space and storage, keep about 15-20 accessible to your kids. Let your child play with the toys that are remaining for about a week. To take it a step further, set up limits by organizing the toys. Bins and buckets that are labeled will help them know how to put away their toys. You can create labels that have words and pictures on them. We always had a toy basket that was a catch all for the toys. Whatever fit in that basket were the toys that the kids played with. Anything beyond that I kept in a closet or in the garage in a bin that I would use as a toy rotation. Every week I would reintroduce the "new toys" and the kids thought it was like a new toy all over again.

When my kids were really little I would have only one area in our house that would be the play/toy area. I didn't have any toy storage in their bedrooms. That made for less areas for me to have to tidy up. The play area was downstairs, near the kitchen, in our TV room. As the kids got older, I let them have toys in their bedrooms. We would have clean up time a few times throughout the day. Our "Tidy Time" would be a fun game. I would have them pretend that the ground was covered in hot lava and we had to rescue the toys before they melted and we had to move fast so our feet wouldn't get burned. Other fun ideas would be to make personalized aprons that they can put on during clean up time, make clean up a competition (this can be a slippery slope, you need to gauge this for your own child's temperament) see who can pick up ten toys first, or five pieces of trash, etc. Downsizing the amount of toys makes for cleaning up easier, too. Anyone, no matter what age would feel overwhelmed to clean up if there is just too much to clean.

Keep It Sweet and Neat,

Stephanie