Reply to I want to get rid of all the toys in my house

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It might help to have the kids rank the toys in the order they like them, so they can begin to internalize that even if they like something, not all things are equal.

Can you say more about how the toys are bothering you? No room for all of them? Kids don't help put them away? If you help them start understanding that everything has to have its own place to go (e.g. not all crammed into a jumble somewhere) it might be a starting place. You could quietly remove some and see if they ask about them, but it's better in the long run if they can be in on it because they get a better understanding of what fits and what doesn't fit, rather than relying on someone else to regulate that for them.[/quote]

Ranking for the big kids should work.

The problem, maybe not a real problem, is that the younger kids or younger kids’ friends may want to play with the older kid’s toys that are no longer his favorite.

I’m bothered because our house looks like a big clutter of plastic junk.[/quote]

The younger kids don't have to have all the things.  I have finally gotten to this point with some of our stuff - we've got three kids, the youngest is 2 yo and there are no cousins on either side, so we have every baby and toddler toy known to man.  And I finally realized last week, if we have a fourth, he/she will survive without a Fisher Price popcorn popper or a Baby Einstein take-along-tunes.  Those things served our 3 kids well, but I can now pass on about half of the baby and toddler stuff and still have plenty for a hypothetical little sibling.  If your older kids have a dozen dinos, you can get rid of half and you'll still have a good number of dinos for the littlest one to play with when he's older.  [/quote]

I'll add, I don't feel bad about the younger ones having less toys because a) they are going to get a bunch of gifts over time that add to general amount of crap in our house and b) I swear my older two don't even remotely appreciate the stuff they have because there is so freaking much of it.

One thing that helped me, besides purging, was organizing and making sure the kids adhere to the organizational scheme.  If I could get good at making them put things away right away like some other people are, then I'd be in really good shape.  [/quote]

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