No room for any more toys?

[Anonymous]

We have too many and we didn't buy most of them. Play kitchen, work bench, indoor slide (i did get this one),, 4 ride on toys from various people, bouncy horse, duplo pile, magnatile pile, playfood. Etc etc. its mostly the big toys that take up space. Oldest (5) also has a bed full of stuffed animals. Too many toys is when each thing doesn't have its own place. We have a 1 year old too who has some simpler toys and those will go in 6 months thankfully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Minimalism is a class status indicator these days.

This.
For some reason it's important for some people to buy a huge house and then choose to keep it empty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Minimalism is a class status indicator these days.

This.
For some reason it's important for some people to buy a huge house and then choose to keep it empty.

I don't really understand how people don't see the giant house an anti-minimalism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Minimalism is a class status indicator these days.

This.
For some reason it's important for some people to buy a huge house and then choose to keep it empty.

I don't really understand how people don't see the giant house an anti-minimalism.

I don’t understand why people think that if you have a big house you should fill it with crap. You have more space, that doesn’t mean you need more stuff in drawers or closets and on shelves. There is a finite amount of things people need. That doesn’t change when you have larger bedrooms or a bigger kitchen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Minimalism is a class status indicator these days.

This.
For some reason it's important for some people to buy a huge house and then choose to keep it empty.

I don't really understand how people don't see the giant house an anti-minimalism.

I don’t understand why people think that if you have a big house you should fill it with crap. You have more space, that doesn’t mean you need more stuff in drawers or closets and on shelves. There is a finite amount of things people need. That doesn’t change when you have larger bedrooms or a bigger kitchen.

Thank you. I need space to feel comfortable - both physical and visual space. I did not understand why I was so uncomfortable growing up. It was when I moved out and my parents came over that I saw it. "Why don't you put some cute knickknacks along all your window sills?" "Why did you tuck everything in the kitchen away - the counters look so bare?" "You have all this extra room in your closet - you need more clothes to fill it up!" No, no and no. I just want space. I don't want stuff.

[Anonymous]

Toys that work together are very different from individual items. I have no problem with adding to dollhouse, kitchen playset, or train kit but another dancing tv character or stand alone item just land in a jumbled heap in a toy box.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Minimalism is a class status indicator these days.

This.
For some reason it's important for some people to buy a huge house and then choose to keep it empty.

I don't really understand how people don't see the giant house an anti-minimalism.

I don’t understand why people think that if you have a big house you should fill it with crap. You have more space, that doesn’t mean you need more stuff in drawers or closets and on shelves. There is a finite amount of things people need. That doesn’t change when you have larger bedrooms or a bigger kitchen.

Thank you. I need space to feel comfortable - both physical and visual space. I did not understand why I was so uncomfortable growing up. It was when I moved out and my parents came over that I saw it. "Why don't you put some cute knickknacks along all your window sills?" "Why did you tuck everything in the kitchen away - the counters look so bare?" "You have all this extra room in your closet - you need more clothes to fill it up!" No, no and no. I just want space. I don't want stuff.

Yessss!

[Anonymous]

We are not one in and one out, but we do set some limits. My kids really love Barbie and Calico Critters and have a good collection of each. It's not one of those things in and one out, but since we have those we are not going to do a Peppa Pig house/car/etc (for example).

[Anonymous]

OP, a lot of these kids have a couple rooms full of toys. It may not be so much about the space as about the overwhelm.

I grew up LMC to MC and had plenty of toys. But my younger relatives have rooms full of toys. It's completely over the top, and so much plastic. Assume that most of the these one toy in, one toy out parents have wayyyy tooo much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am one of those posters. We have 3100 sq ft but limited places for toys to go. The kids get one basket in their rooms, one in the main living/kitchen area, and a bookshelf and a few baskets in the basement. Could I put more toys elsewhere? Sure. But we choose to limit toys because the research supports kids having fewer toys. Here is one:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/singletons/201712/study-underscores-why-fewer-toys-is-the-better-option

There's a big difference between a study that says that kids under 2.5 play better when there are fewer toys out in the space, and the conclusion that kids of any age shouldn't own toys.

Nobody is saying kids shouldn’t own toys.

[Anonymous]

There is sooooo much grey area here. I'm kinda a borderline minimalist. I do think that often less is more. I think having five toys your child loves and plays with is better than 100 crappy toys they don't even like. And I think if you have 95 toys that they don't really like, and five they love, it's easy for those five to get "buried" (metaphorically or literally) and they don't get as much enjoyment out of them.

So - my kid is still tiny, but I definitely cull as my kid grows out of stuff or seems to not really like a toy. But if my kid, to use your example, loved Barbies and played with them a ton, and had a gazillion Barbie things to make their Barbie world, I wouldn't mess with that! Have all the Barbie you want, kid. But if that means that the formerly-beloved Legos are rarely touched, then yeah, I might trash all or most of them.

[Anonymous]

So I read the article about the toy study. I think you're misinterpreting their findings. The study had nothing to do with how many toys the researchers owned or had on the shelves in their lab. They were trying to understand how the quantity of toys put in front of the subjects impacted on the quality of play among toddlers. They found that play quality is better when you give the toddlers 4 toys compared to 16 toys. Frankly, this isn't a surprise. From this finding, you should present your toddlers with just a few toys at a time to play with. It says nothing about the number of toys that you should keep on the shelves or cabinets.

"Researchers observed 36 toddler subjects between the ages of 18 and 30 months in free-play sessions. The toddlers were given either four toys or 16. “There was a significant difference in the quality of toddlers’ play between the two toy conditions,” the study reports. "As measured by sustained play and variety of manners of play, toddlers had a greater quality of play in the Four Toy condition compared to the Sixteen Toy condition." Essentially, when given a few toys, the toddlers played with them in more varied ways and for longer periods of time." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/singletons/201712/study-underscores-why-fewer-toys-is-the-better-option

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So I read the article about the toy study. I think you're misinterpreting their findings. The study had nothing to do with how many toys the researchers owned or had on the shelves in their lab. They were trying to understand how the quantity of toys put in front of the subjects impacted on the quality of play among toddlers. They found that play quality is better when you give the toddlers 4 toys compared to 16 toys. Frankly, this isn't a surprise. From this finding, you should present your toddlers with just a few toys at a time to play with. It says nothing about the number of toys that you should keep on the shelves or cabinets.

"Researchers observed 36 toddler subjects between the ages of 18 and 30 months in free-play sessions. The toddlers were given either four toys or 16. “There was a significant difference in the quality of toddlers’ play between the two toy conditions,” the study reports. "As measured by sustained play and variety of manners of play, toddlers had a greater quality of play in the Four Toy condition compared to the Sixteen Toy condition." Essentially, when given a few toys, the toddlers played with them in more varied ways and for longer periods of time." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/singletons/201712/study-underscores-why-fewer-toys-is-the-better-option

Totally fair and thanks for flagging that. I use open shelving and don’t want to store things away in a garage or elsewhere so less is more for us. The macro point holds. Kids don’t need more. They need less. It’s how they get creative and bored and grow and build. Often you see kids dump alllll their toys on the floor and then they are too overwhelmed to play for long and definitely too overwhelmed to clean up independently. You don’t see that when kids have a few high quality toys.

[Anonymous]

For me toys don’t bother me as much as expected gifting and the environment impact. I don’t like holidays to focus on gifts. We don’t exchange gifts with cousins at holidays or birthdays. And I don’t like getting a cheap plastic toy I know my kids won’t play with just because someone felt they should get them a gift. So we told everyone we didn’t have space for new toys (which was true until recently).

That said our floor is filled with a million (second hand) Legos and toys for creative play. Occasionally they will pick out ones they’ve outgrown to share with a younger friend, but we don’t force it.