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Decluttering kids toys can be so hard. Between the tantrums, the arguing, and just the sheer numbers of toys it can be overwhelming. I get it, as a kid, I was just a bit of a hoarder too.
I had a 20 pound “collection” of shiny rocks stuffed under my bed. There were toy horses on every flat surface in my bedroom. I collected cool sticks and leaves and random 25 cent toys from the thrift store. I never wanted to get rid of anything, after all, you never knew when you would need it!
Eventually all of my stuff would start taking over my sisters’ side of the bedroom, and then spill into the living room.
I’m pretty sure my hoarding habits drove my mom insane when I was a teenager who refused to throw away empty mascara tubes (even though I never actually wore makeup) and stashed old cowboy boots with holes in them in the back of my closet. And forget about getting rid of ripped up old jeans! I was sure I needed to keep it all.
I did finally start figuring out how to organize and declutter when I moved to a tiny studio apartment when I was twenty. It was only about 150 square feet and the small space forced me to confront my clutter in a big way. (Moms, if you need to declutter too go check out this post on decluttering your closet!)
To look at my house now you’d never know I used to struggle so much with clutter. My house now is much more minimalist than clutter bug.
When my kids toys started taking over their bedrooms and it was taking way longer than an hour to tidy up at night I knew it was time to start decluttering their toys. They were completely overwhelmed by the number of toys that they had. As a result, they were just dumping their toys on the floor instead of playing with them.
They had hundreds of happy meal toys and little broken thrift store toys that they never played with. They couldn’t even find their favorite toys because there were so many toys to dig through.
Worst of all, they weren’t grateful for the things they had or taking care of them. The toys were completely out of control.
Here is how I decluttered my kids toys and how we’ve kept it from ever getting that bad again.
Get rid of broken and “cheap” toys
Since my kids had so many broken and happy meal type toys I started by going through their toys without them and threw away all the broken cheap little toys and the happy meal toys. I ended up getting rid of two full garbage bags of toys!
They never played with them, and honestly, they never even noticed they were gone. If they had helped me sort through these toys it would have been so much harder for them, and for me, to get rid of the really crummy toys.
I do believe kids should help and have some say when you are decluttering their belongings, but when they were young, it just worked better for me to do this step. It had to be done and there was no reason to make it into a battle.
Pick out their favorites
Once I had gotten rid of the obviously trashed toys I had the kids help me with the rest of the decluttering.
To start, we brought all the toys from each bedroom out into the living room and made a big pile. Then I had each kid get their five favorite toys from the pile and go put them away.
The number of favorite toys that they pick out in this step is completely up to you, but I would suggest keeping the number small so that they have to actually think about what they want the most. I think five to ten is a great number to start with.
I was talking to a friend recently who was having trouble decluttering her kids toys because they always put their favorite toys, the ones they play with the most, in the pile to donate. Having the kids pick their favorites out of the pile first is a really great way to avoid this problem.
Knowing that they already kept their favorites also makes it easier for kids to say goodbye to some of their other toys.
Decide how many toys to keep
The next thing I do is decide how many toys I want to keep. There are a couple different ways that you can do this.
Limit by container size
The first way is to keep the amount of toys that will fit in a container, like a toy box or on a shelf. This can work really well for some kids and it helps you make sure that there will be a spot for everything that the kids decide to keep.
The biggest problem with this method is that some kids want to keep tons of little tiny toys that they don’t ever play with just so that they have more toys in their box. Or one child will decide to keep a giant stuffed animal that takes up all the room in the box and not have room for anything else.
It can be a great teaching moment to help them learn to make good decisions, or it can be a huge battle. It really just depends on your parenting style and your child’s personality.
Limit by number of toys
The second way is to keep a set number of toys. I tend to prefer this method since my kids always wanted to try to keep large numbers of small things they didn’t really like that much, just so they had lots of toys. Limiting their toys to a set number helped them to make better decisions on what they wanted to keep.
The other thing that I really like about setting a specific number of toys that they can keep is that it can be flexible. After they pick out their five favorite toys from the first step, they put them away. Then they pick out the next ten toys and put them away. Then we can go look at how much room they have left to put things.
If they’re almost out of room, we just get five toys on the next pick. Or if there is a lot of room left, they get to pick ten more toys to keep.
Which ever method you decide to use, make sure that you box or bag up the toys to be donated. Every time that I’ve had kids help me bag up the donation toys there has been a melt down over a toy that they just love and can’t get rid of, even though they haven’t played with it for six months.
Just trust me and make your life easier. Bag up the toys that need to be gotten rid of by yourself. I usually do this while kids are putting away the toys they chose to keep.
While I give the kids a lot of control over what they want to keep, I do supervise what they get rid of.
For example, my boys played with Legos every single day when they were little. They absolutely loved them. But, every single time we decluttered, the Legos would get left in the pile of things to get rid of.
I just pulled the bin out of the pile and put it back on the shelf. I knew they loved them, and I think Legos are great developmental toys for kids. Since I’m the adult, I decided that they weren’t something we were getting rid of. I do the same thing with educational toys and books.
Organize
The final step is to organize the toys that you kept. I like to use cube organizers with plastic bins or inexpensive plastic drawers to organize toys.
Clear plastic drawers are nice because they are see through, which is really helpful when kids are trying to find a specific toy.
As you’re organizing toys, try to resist the urge to fill bins and drawers as full as they will go. When they are filled to the brim, your kids will have to dig through them or dump them out to find what they are looking for. Try to make sure that all of the toys are visible from the top of the bin so that your kids can easily find what they are looking for.
I also like to have my kids help me decide how to organize their toys once they’re old enough. The whole idea behind this method is to teach kids how to declutter and organize on their own. Having them participate teaches them this important skill.
We went through toys every summer when my kids were little, but now that they’re teenagers they usually keep their things organized and decluttered with just a reminder. Decluttering your kids toys can be overwhelming the first time you do it, but it will make a huge difference in your daily routine. I use the 80/20 rule when I’m cleaning my house, and decluttering kids toys is definitely in the top 20 percent of things that make 80 percent of the results you get. If you’ve never heard of the 80/20 rule I have a post all about it! It really was a life changing concept for me!
What are your biggest struggles when you declutter your kids toys? Comment below, I’d love to hear from you!
