Back in January I was fed up with TOYS all over our house and did a great big clean up and packed up a big box to donate/sell. You can see how that went here. Well that did not last long and the house was a mess once again. I decide to take an afternoon while the girls were sleeping to organize the toys into 4 small totes that could be rotated every week. I put a little of everything into each tote so they would have musical instruments, play food, and doll clothes every week.

The above four boxes is not all of their toys. I left out all their dress up clothes, stuffed animals, dolls, and a few kitchen items like their tea set and pots/bowls. After the first week I packed up the tote that had been out and went and put it up in the storage closet with the others. I didn’t bring another one down because it was a mess downstairs with dress up clothes and books all over the floor. Well that was two weeks ago and I have not brought another box down. And guess what? They have not noticed. They have been perfectly content playing with the stuffed animals and dolls, making tea, coloring, reading, and cooking make believe food. And they still make huge messes with those items.

I think I will go through the four boxes again and purge them even more. I will start bringing down a box once a week again, but I think it is awesome that my kids don’t need a million toys around them all the time. I really want to get back to basic toys. I would rather we have a few well made, high quality toys that allow my kids to use their imaginations than a large amount of poor quality, battery operated toys that do all the work for them.

So as soon as the weather warms up I am having a yard sale while Stefan occupies the girls so they don’t see how many of their toys I am selling.

So readers, how many toys do your kids have? Do you need to do a big toy purge? Start rotating toys? Do you need to simplify your toys to encourage more play? This is a great time of year to start sorting and organizing for yard sale season.