Toy control

In My Humble Opinion
1

It’s my daughter’s first Christmas and I am beginning to panic about toys overrunning the house. My mother buys a whole lotta stuff for me at Christmas, and it looks like she’s buying Amelia a whole lotta stuff too. My husband’s sister is a bored compulsive shopper who not only hands down her kids’ copious toys and buys Amelia stuff at garage sales, but has gotten her something HUGE and new for this year. Random aunts and uncles and cousins of ours have sent her presents.

We have no room to dedicate to toys; all of Amelia’s stuff has to be in her room or in the main living space.

I think I’m going to round up basically everything she already has (with the exception of favorite stuffed animals and a few solid classic toys) and get rid of it before Christmas. She’s too little to notice now. But in the future…?

What do you do?

2

I have some experience with this. Now we live in a decently-sized house with plenty of storage space, but in the past we’ve lived in some shoebox-sized places with no closets, and had relatives that loved thrift shopping.

OK, first of all, stop accepting hand-me-downs. This can be hard with some people who really, really want to give you things, but it is your first line of defense. If they absolutely insist, take the toys when your kid isn’t around, and then immediately donate them to Goodwill or some other charity.

Second, when people ask what your child wants for Christmas, suggest books and clothing. A lot of people will get her toys anyway, but this will probably at least cut down on the total number. (I mean, you don’t want her to get ONLY books and clothes, but if you can get some of the more prolific gift-givers to replace some of the toys with other things, it will help.)

Third, every year before Christmas, go through and get rid of things your kid doesn’t play with anymore. When they get older, you can enlist their help with this. My kids are very familiar with the “round up toys to donate to charity” end-of-year routine. Broken and damaged stuff obviously just gets pitched, but we often have a nice box of good-condition toys that can be donated.

Very large toys that simply will not fit in the house get stored at a relative’s house. “This will be a toy for playing with at Grandma’s house!” etc. Preferably this will be the house of the relative who gave you the gift. If this isn’t an option, I would seriously return the gift or give it away before devoting serious square footage to it inside my home. I do not understand the mindset of people who know that you live in (for example) a 900-sq-ft house with no closets, and give you an indoor climbing gym for your child’s first birthday. I mean, what? But anyway.

When deluged with gifts, I sometimes will also put some back for birthdays. We have a neighbor who “anonymously” (we know who’s doing it but they’ve never admitted to it) leaves several bags full of toys and clothing at our door every Christmas season. While extremely generous and kind of them, this often leads to a massive toy surplus situation, so sometimes I’ll just take things and store them for later birthday gifts.

This situation is always a little difficult, because it’s hard not to feel guilty about having “my child gets too many gifts!” as a problem, but it IS a problem when you have limited storage space and you don’t want your entire living space to be overrun with toys. I know how you feel.

3

But it is a problem. For the kids, too. My kids had so much stuff that none of it had any value to them. They couldn’t keep it organized and if it got lost, it didn’t matter to them.

What we have done is to tell people that we live in a small home and are not moving so they need to keep it to one toy per occasion. They are welcome to get them extra books, clothes or crafty things but only one toy. (My mother, who suggested we do this, was the first person to break the rule. She got proper hell out of kid earshot and has fallen in line ever since.)

We also have twice annual clear outs or toys. The one a few weeks ago we explained that if you want to get new toys for christmas, there has to be somewhere to put them. The kids easily got rid of 30-40% of the toys they had. And these were the ones they don’t play with! (They get to make all the decisions during this phase. A bit harder with a one-year-old.) The other clear out is before our annual garage sale. Any proceeds from the sale of their ‘stuff’ goes back to them as a little incentive.

As for the hand-me-down clothes, we go through everything as soon as it enters the house. If it is inappropriate or the kids will otherwise not be able to use it, we donate it to goodwill. The rest is laundered and neatly folded in a big bin in my daughter’s closet (she has the biggest closet in the house). When the seasons start to change (pants to shorts and back) we have a little party where each kid tries on everything they have (things that don’t fit get donated or handed down) and we go through the bin to see if there is anything there that is now too small (donated) or will now fit.

On top of this, we clean out every cupboard/closet/storage area of our house every six months. We get rid of things we don’t use to free up space.

4

Holy crap, this, except I’d knock out the word “preferably” and make it as compulsory as the law of gravity. I would also add “very annoying and/or loud” toys to the list.

Hey, you gave Timmy this giant ear-splitting drum kit? YOU listen to it!

5

Now that my son is 4, we do the donation thing before the major holidays (birthday and Christmas within 8 weeks). He goes through and we pick out toys to donate to the Y or the women’s shelter.

6

I have no idea what your storage situation is, but if you have any place at all to store things what I used to do was pack up some of the toys and rotate them. First, get rid of all the crappy toys and toys she doesn’t play with or has broken or outgrown. But, if you are like we were, you may still have a substantial collection of nice toys she likes, and not enough room. At this point, get like 2 large storage tubs (or whatever you can fit; you get the picture) and divide the good toys into 3 piles; two in the tubs, and one in her room. Then, each month (or however) rotate them out.

This really helps avoid “toy fatigue”, where your kid is just bored with what they have. It’s like getting new toys all the time, and also old favorites keep showing up. In my experience, kids play a lot more with their toys when they only have a few anyway. I think they get overwhelmed.

Anyway, good luck!

7

I agree with the periodic clean outs. My parents treated it as just a regular part of life, so it didn’t come as such a cruel surprise to donate our things.

Because the whole house was regularly cleaned out, there was very little junk cluttering the place and it just made living easier. I do it now, myself, and still feel that great sense of an ordered space and helpfulness to others, that I had as a kid.

Anybody who complains should be ashamed. You’re not running a museum!

8

This is one of those parenting gems that I wish I could tell everyone. It works wonders. The kids don’t mind because even though you’re taking their toys away, they’re getting new ones. And hopefully you wait long enough between rotations that they forget what’s in the incoming tub.

9

Besides emphasising the small size of our house when family have asked about suitable gifts (and requesting books etc as above), on Baby From Mars’s birthday when we got just too many gifts, we put some away unopened for regifting - mainly from friends who we knew would not be coming round often wanting to see their gift being used.

Big items (things we had bought) once she had outgrown them which won’t get used again - exersaucer, bouncer etc went straight onto EBay. I’ll be buying another exersaucer off eBay for baby #2, but it’s really a short term use thing.

Besides that, we don’t buy her things as any other time of the year - birthday and Christmas only - keeps the clutter down.

10

Rotating sounds like a really good idea. She has a lot of toys that seem too nice to toss, just… too many of them. And I agree that it’s possible for kids to have so many toys that they aren’t interested in any of them. We have an attic that a couple of bins can be put in.

11

This is another important one. The only things my kids get when it is not their birthday or Christmas are food and clothes from us.

12

Can you request a donation to her college fund? Does that come off as money-grubbing? I have no idea what the etiquette is, but I’ll need to know by next Christmas. What does a kid less than a year old need with so much stuff anyway? I know that people love to buy adorable things, but my god. My mother in law has already knitted about 50 little washcloths and bought a couple years worth of Halloween costumes. And I’m not due until April.

I’ll have to remember the storage tubs idea.

13

After the year the Kiddo was 3 and we couldn’t fit all his presents in our mid-sized sedan after Christmas at my in-laws. We asked for fewer presents. It was ridiculous. Poor kid had a melt down halfway through opening his gifts because there were so many and he couldn’t understand why he had to keep opening more presents when he really just wanted to play with the ones he’s already unwrapped. I think seeing the melt down helped my husband’s side of the family realized that as much as they wanted to indulge the Kiddo, they were doing it more for themselves than for him.

14

My brother’s MiL loves shopping, and my mother kinda thinks there’s a competition to prove who loves my nephews and niece the most with the most toys.

My brother just bought a new house, mostly for more storage space. With Number One Nephew now 9, they’re way to late in controlling the toy explosion.

They would have done well to limit it to one and only present per child per occasion (last year, each child got about 5 presents from each set of grandparents.)

And it really would have helped to offer a list of suggestions, too. It’s hard to keep up with what a kid is interested in, or which Thomas the Train toys he already has, or whatnot. A list of “My Little Pony toys (she has these), clothes (in size X), books, colored paper for drawing or crafts, or a donation to her college fund” would be perfectly appropriate. And might lessen the chance of getting the jumbo-sized Barbie’s Dream House that you have no room for.

15

I don’t have kids, but I have many nieces and nephews. I can tell you that, at least in my family, offering alternatives to toys is SO appreciated. We know these kids have tons of stuff. If they might appreciate art supplies, they need clothes, or there’s something “big” that the whole family can go in on, we are on board. It’s hard with really little ones, but as the kids get older, we also try to give experience gifts to expose the kids to things their parents don’t have time for or can’t afford.

My Sis-in-law also established guidelines for giving her kids gifts - you can buy all the clothes and books you want, but only one toy or video game type gift, please. She explained the reasoning (much like what’s upthread) and we all agreed. It spread through that side of the family, so that gift giving is equitable at Christmas.

YMMV depending on your family politics, but if you set a precedent early, you may be able to swing it.

16

I STILL do something like this with my books and graphic novels. I re-read almost every book, but I don’t have unlimited shelf space, so I pack up most of my books and rotate them in and out of the storage space.

Rotating toys works very well indeed with kids. It’s especially effective when the kid has a birthday close to Christmas…first there’s a large amount of new toys coming in, and then there’s a long dry spell. My daughter was born on the 26th of June, and so she got new toys every six months. Still, I did rotate her toys, and she’d be delighted to see some of the old toys again.