Children accumulate a lot of stuff! Even in homes where parents are very conservative in their purchases, children typically have grandparents, aunts and uncles who love to shower them with birthday and Christmas gifts. The more toys, books and such that our children have, the more time (theirs and ours) will need to be spent taking care of it and tidying up messes, and the more organized we need to be.

My first recommendation about organizing toys is to limit the amount of toys your children have. We may not have purchased all these things, but we are responsible for how much we allow them to keep. We de-clutter regularly, using the miner’s approach that I love all too well. I involve my children in this process, for several reasons:

  • I would feel like a great big sneak if I gave away toys without their knowledge.
  • To de-clutter, we need to pick out the “treasures” to keep. My children know better than I do what they treasure.
  • I have a great opportunity to teach them to effectively de-clutter, a skill that they will find very valuable when they grow up and have homes of their own.
  • The children get to experience the joy of giving to others. They know that the toys they don’t keep will be given to other children, and they like to think of how happy those children will be to have the toys.

The first time I involved my children in the process, I explained that they have so many toys, that they can’t possibly play with them all. I said that with so many toys, it is hard to keep them neat and cleaned up, and hard to find a place to keep them all. I told them that many children have hardly any toys at all, and that we were going to give some things away to share with those other children. To get them started, I dumped out the first box of toys and told them that I wanted them to pick out the things that were very special to them, and we would put those back in the box. We would give everything else away.

When my children did this for the first time, I fully expected that they would say that everything was special, and that they wanted to keep it all. To my surprise, they have never done this! In fact, they usually want to give away far more than I want them to, and a few times I have held a few things back that they wanted to give away! The children see the value in having fewer toys to clean up, and they love to give. They will often say things such as, “Mommy, I’ll bet a little girl is going to love this baby doll!”

So what do we do with those treasured toys that we keep? As much as possible, we keep little toys all together for the sake of making everything as easy as possible to put away. We do not separate green Army men, race cars or little medieval knights. They all go in a single bin, which we call the “Boys’ Box.” Similarly, we have a “Girls’ Box” filled with Polly Pockets, little dollhouse pieces, and other small girl things. There are certain toys that have a single home of their own, such as K-nex pieces, train set, doll clothes & accessories, and wooden blocks.  The biggest toy box is for dress-up, but it contains much more than princess dresses and Army suits. It also includes purses, swords, Army canteens, a doctor kit, and anything at all related to character play.

A few other tips:

  • Try to limit the number of rooms where toys are kept. In our home, we use one of bedrooms as a Play Room, and most toys are kept there. The children’s bedrooms are for sleeping, reading, and dressing, and very few toys are kept there. This drastically reduces the amount of mess at playtime.
  • Most of our small toy bins have snap-on lids that are good for preventing a full-blown toddler attack. No need to worry about the toddlers being deprived, though… they always have ready access to a couple safe toys in open bins; they are just limited in number.
  • We keep one large bin on each floor of our home that toys can be dropped in quickly for a “quick tidy.” About once a month, or whenever the bins are overflowing, we do a “round-up,” returning all the toys to their rightful home. For more details about this, click here.
  • Some sort of shelf is helpful to hold those little bins along with freestanding toys such as castles, pirate ships and globes. We use an old changing table for this purpose.

Want more? Check out Clothing Storage or see the list of all my Home Organization Posts.