I got rid of half my kids toys and it’s the best thing ever.
I found myself nearly everyday feeling so defeated that our kids weren’t playing well. They have an entire playroom with a toy rotation, play kitchen, sensory table, you name it. But they wouldn’t even go in half the time which is just a flat out bummer. I kept thinking about it and rotating toys and then after rotating the same toys in and out for several months I started to take inventory of toys that didn’t get played with. It was a lot of them. I would rotate them in leave them for a week or two and they would be in the same exact spot. Never once touched. For some of our toys this happened over a period of nearly six months of trying… so I got rid of the sad toys no one was playing with, decluttered, and did a re-inventory of what we had and what we needed more of as they entered into a new developmental stage.
When I tell you decluttering has never felt better. We had so many toys that didn’t work or didn’t have all the pieces and I had just never taken the time to go through the toy closet and get rid of things that didn’t work, were incomplete, or weren’t played with and it ended up being half of our toys. Now obviously I hung on to a lot of more baby geared stuff for the future to bring back out if another tiny human joins our family but I moved it into storage and out of the closet where we keep toys that aren’t currently in the playroom.
Once I did this rotations went back to being enjoyable, we went back to our philosophy of open-ended Montessori style toys and away from most closed ended and ever since our kids have been playing beautifully. When we had our first I was very strict about only Montessori style, no batteries, no plastic, etc. and then life gets busy people give gifts and I got more lax about it over the years. But now i’m reverting back to my old ways because plain and simple, our kids play better with open ended toys that aren’t flashing in their face and singing just adding to the chaos.
So if you’re looking for a sign, let this be it. Go through all your toys, have your kids help you!! and I promise everyone will thank you for it. I was pleasantly surprised how willing my little ones were to “let their toys be played with and loved” by someone else for awhile. We talked all about how toys want to be played with and if we aren’t playing with them someone else will and funny enough a lot of the toys that were already slated to go were volunteered.
All that to say, we’re back to the basics. Toys that we love, that are played with every single day, and that actually make rotations exciting again!!