How Do you Deal with Truckloads of Kids Toys in your Home?

Tips on how to declutter and organize your kids toys.

I hope you have been doing well for the clutter challenge! Last week we split our home into 6 different zones and started (and hopefully finished) the first zone, master bedroom and closet. This week we are working on the kids rooms. If you do not have kids rooms then you can make this zone guest and extra rooms.

The toughest part about the kids rooms (in my house anyway) is the toys! We have talked about making a “play” room. But, that doesn't really solve the problem – it just moves them somewhere else! I couldn't decide if I should include the kids in this de-cluttering, but in the end I decided that they could help and it turned turned out fine. They were okay with the toys we got rid of (even though it was over half of them) because they were the ones making the decision.

Here is our “clutter” toy strategy

• First, we brought all of their toys into the livingroom… all of them. That included toys that were in the storage room.

• Next we split them into groups. In our case we had a few things that belonged together (dress up clothes, puppets, train table items, cars, and an animal village). All the rest went in a “general” pile.

• I laid out all the toys in the general pile and gave the boys tickets. They got to walk around the room and shop for their favorite toys. The ones that didn't get a ticket went to the giveaway pile.

• We repeated this with the other piles.

All in all we ended up getting rid of a couple things out of the dress up clothes and a couple puppets, just over half of the train table track and trains, and about half of the general pile items, and almost all of the cars pile!

Here are a couple other tips that worked for us:

• For the most part I just let them pick the ones they wanted, but if there was something I really didn't want (like a plastic McDonald's toy, seriously, how did that make it into the top ten!!?) then I made a “deal”. I would pick out a couple toys that I knew they were on the fence about and offer those back in exchange for their latest pick. I made a deal with each of them twice. My youngest took it both times and my oldest once.

• We reduce clutter in the house by splitting the toys into groups that are rotated every two weeks. This keeps their toys fun and exciting and keeps their room from getting out of control. That said, we did cut this down to 2 groups rather than the 5 we had before. If you have the storage space for it, that idea works well.

Once the toys were done, the rest of the room pretty much fell into place. As far as clothes go, I used the same strategy that I used with the master bedroom closet and went with 10 days worth of outfits.

If you have already tackled the kids rooms I would love to hear how you did! If not then get some “before” pictures. It will help inspire you in the next few weeks! Next week we are going to be decluttering the bathrooms!

Happy homesteading! You can follow the clutter challenge via my email newsletter here and via my facebook page here 🙂