Do you have a play room for your kids? Or a mountain of toys that seem to procreate over night? That was exactly what our kids toys felt like, the well meaning family would send boxes of toys and then they grew more friends. I would go in their room and take out bags of toys, the broken and forgotten, the never played with and the who bought you this? toys. Still the mountain would grow!!
It finally came to a head one day when the blonde son asked where his blue car was that he could take apart. After digging in the toys we found it, part of it... the other parts were scattered in the room. That was it! I couldn't keep shuffling toys back and forth from the living room to the boy's room only to see that they couldn't find the ones they really wanted! The purge began...
How do I sift through this mess?
If you are considering doing the same thing you may wonder where to begin. I started with the toys most often played with and put them in a bin off to the side. For these boys its: cars, legos, blocks, car tracks and trains. The rest were all 'meh toys', those went in a separate pile. All the broken ones, messed up wheel ones, the puzzles missing pieces and tossed them all in the landfill to hang out with the toys from Toy Story 3.
Then the lefter over 'meh toys' were sorted thru and put into give away and sell piles. If there is not an attachment or any care to play with them then I say give them to a family that actually wants or needs them! Like Andy did with Buzz, Woody and all their friends, so basically I was Andy's mom from Toy Story 3, but my kids were not going to college.
So now what? You still have a ton of toys left over right? Where did they come from? How can you get them to stop procreating? Tell the well meaning friends and family that the kids are good on the toys for now and if they want to buy them anything that an experience or lessons in something is even better! Art lessons, guitar lessons, theme park tickets, zoo passes etc...
After the mess is cleared up the feeling of a nice room were you can see the floor is such a nice feeling! The kids are more apt to play in the room now and cleaning it up is so much easier! So go make yourself a cup of coffee, turn on the tunes from your teen years and start sorting like its 1995! (Toy Story 1)
