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Becky Le
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| Posted: July 27 2009 at 6:06pm | IP Logged
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(I'm not sure if this is the right forum so please feel free to move this!)
Do you allow your children to keep toys in their bedrooms? I'm asking because we just re-made my son's room into a "big girl room" for the twins and it is so nice and peaceful without toys everywhere. When I compare it to my ODDs' room I want to cry. They have toys literally everywhere! I know it's a challenge to have two girls, 3.5 year apart, in one room because of the disparity in types of toys but I am so sick of the mess. I'm seriously considering banning all but a couple of toys from the bedrooms since we're in the midst of this giant reorganization anyway but I fear toys all over the house which makes me even more nuts. 
After IHM I resolved to take up Dr. Ray's challenge and get rid of stuff, he says 90%, I'm sincerely aiming for 50% less toys and we have been working on getting the giant plastic baby stuff out and getting stuff out of the big girls' room but I am loathe to get rid of their Bitty Baby/AG stuff since it's so nice, but there's so much of it! And with 5 kids at different stages I feel overwhelmed and don't want to shortchange the babies just because theirs is the easiest stuff to get rid of.
HELP! I think I need a major dose of perspective and maybe some organizational help. 
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Becky, loving wife to Chris and mom to Stephen (11/99), Elizabeth (04/01), Catherine (08/04), Natalie & Samantha (10/07)
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: July 27 2009 at 6:33pm | IP Logged
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I have a corner in my living room for baby toys.. I figure I prefer they play where they can be watched easily anyway.. I have a small recliner in that corner and just pull it forward a bit more and to the side and I have a free corner that is partly hidden. That means it's only the older kids toys in the bedrooms. And there is no other room in this house for the toys.. so it's either in the bedrooms or gone. We have a small house so just the baby toys in the corner is all my livingroom can handle and still be used as a living room.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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juststartn
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| Posted: July 27 2009 at 6:35pm | IP Logged
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Wow.
Well, I've got three dds (9,7,5) sharing a room. That's where their toys stay. It is a shambles. I mean, we clean it, but it doesn't stay that way. I guess you could say I've given up..but that is where the toys STAY (because it is easier to keep the toys in one place...and NOT in the public areas of the house..).
We have a small basket of toys in the family room, but I like to keep things company ready in there, so we keep those to an absolute minimum.
As far as going through the things to get rid of, I'd give each dc a garbage bag..and say "fill it with the stuff you no longer want". Donate. Use as a tax deduction. Give it to your parish for a rummage sale. Give it away on freecycle. Sell it on ebay.
There ya go. LOL. I'm BAAAD about going in while the dc are gone and getting rid of all of the broken, missing pieces toy mess. Very occasionally, I will get rid of something that they really really liked, but usually, they never notice.
Now, if I could get the family to stop giving them so doggone many bits of nonsense...lol....
Rachel
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JennGM
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| Posted: July 27 2009 at 6:46pm | IP Logged
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We keep the toys downstairs. I want the boys around me when they are playing, not out-of-sight. The chaos often irks me, but it's what I prefer. I can purge and organize when it bugs me.
Right now my living room and front entry way are covered with Thomas the Tank Engine wooden tracks and a Playmobil set-up (Roman colliseum, castles, police station). I went to the FCL Conference and Daddy played Playmobil. 
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Jennifer G. Miller
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LeeAnn
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| Posted: July 27 2009 at 6:50pm | IP Logged
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It is amazing how "nice" toys can become burdens, isn't it? Speaking from experience. My older two each have two AG dolls and a great-grandmother who buys them WAY too many accessories and outfits, despite my pleas. Generally, we keep all of it in their original boxes on the top shelf of their closets.
My 11yo now rarely plays with toys. She is just about ready to have her good stuff boxed up and put into storage into the garage. She has become very good about getting rid of things when she no longer uses them.
My 9yo still hoards every last thing. Her room is the messiest. We don't have anywhere else to put toys in our house, so they must go in the bedrooms. Were I to do things over, I would change the expectations of what is a reasonable amount of stuff to keep. However I am hoping she'll grow out of it soon. And I have to admit, two whole shelves in her room are collectible dolls from MY childhood (from the same grandma, of course).
My 6yo and 3yo share a room and with them I've been more stringent about weeding things out that aren't really played with. We also have a small closet in the kitchen where I keep the boy stuff--the cars and noisy toys I don't want in the bedroom. It is mostly my 6yo's doll stuff (Bitty Baby here too!) in their bedroom. To be honest, she rarely sits down and plays with toys.
If I had time and money, I would sort and box all their toys and send them to the garage, to be pulled out in rotation as needed. (My 9yo's room would still be messy though because she is a crafty soul who has papers, pencils and scissors all over!)
If I could be assured that my grandmother would never find out, I would happily allow my daughters to gift others with their American Girl stuff. But she is the sort who asks about it everytime we see her and wouldn't take kindly to us giving such expensive toys away. [BTW my grandmother is a serious doll collector and probably is engaging in some wish fulfillment in buying these things for my kids. Things she thinks she wishes she had growing up in the Depression.]
I have gone through cycles of getting rid of the less precious stuff: Barbies, Bratz  , Polly Pockets, dozens of unloved stuffed animals.... They don't miss it. Having a clean and organized house is worth the trouble and temporary pain of decluttering. I hadn't heard Dr. Ray was giving decluttering advice now; I'll have to look that up.
I have given away 95% of my baby stuff, saved just a few heirloom type items. The reality is, were I to become pregnant again, all these things are so easy to get for free or nearly so, it's really not worth hanging on to all of it (and the same thing with clothing). You can trade with friends if your baby really gets tired of the toys you have.
While I don't intentionally store toys in all the rooms of the house, they seem to end up there anyway. Sometimes it's helpful to have a designated basket for toys for each room. So at least if your toddler son leaves his matchbox cars all over your dresser and bed there is a place the cars can be put where they "belong" the next time they come looking for the toys.
Another idea is to set your standards for toys really high--like Regina Doman (the Catholic author) only allows nice wooden (or at least nonplastic) toys in her home. Almost automatically this limits the amount of toys that come into the home since nonplastic toys are generally more expensive.
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Becky Le
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| Posted: July 27 2009 at 6:58pm | IP Logged
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I like the idea of setting the standards high. If I had my way I would get rid of everything except the AG stuff for the girls (and Rose Petal Cottage stuff for the little girls).
So I don't sound like a scrooge we do have toys pretty much on every level but mostly concentrated in their bedrooms and in the finished part of the basement which is also our school room. I like to keep the little girls toys down in the school room so they have their own things while the big kids work. My son is very specific in his tastes so the vast majority of his stuff can be kept in his closet or in IKEA bins and storage. He doesn't have a lot that is precious to him outside of his animals (stuffed and plastic) and his Star Wars figures. My dds otoh....my nearly 5 yo would be completely happy with just her Bitty Baby (and soon to be AG) stuff (which takes up quite a bit of room on its own, lol) but my 8 yo forms an emotional bond with everything to ever be given to her no matter how junky.
And now I'm rambling....I guess the short answer is they need to divest themselves physically and emotionally from so much stuff and I need to rotate the AG stuff, maybe the ski stuff for winter, the beach stuff for summer, that sort of thing.
I'll tell you, it's great having a maiden auntie with a good job who can afford to buy them these nice things but man it's eating up my floor space.
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Becky, loving wife to Chris and mom to Stephen (11/99), Elizabeth (04/01), Catherine (08/04), Natalie & Samantha (10/07)
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Mackfam
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| Posted: July 27 2009 at 9:01pm | IP Logged
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There are some good organizational helps for cleaning, purging, storing in kids rooms on this thread, Becky. I think it will be helpful to you because it speaks to kids who attach to toys...I have one of those.
To answer your question...I do keep a few toys in the kids bedrooms, but I'm very careful to keep only a few quality toys in there at a time. I store a lot and rotate. I toss junk and we gift/donate excess. We keep a very slim amount of toy material out at a given time. This is key or the kids cannot maintain their own rooms.
If you're shooting for getting rid of 50%, I'd challenge you to go a bit further...with the 50% remaining, why not consider putting say 25% in a closet somewhere in bins. Rotate toys out on a seasonal basis. That leaves only 25% of what the kids have right now out in their rooms, it's more do-able in terms of cleaning, and what you keep you know is a good toy. The kids get all charged up when we rotate toys here because everything is new again!
HTH, Becky! 
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Jen Mackintosh
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violingirl
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| Posted: July 28 2009 at 8:17am | IP Logged
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We have these in the kids rooms and the fabric cubes that fit inside each little cubby. If they have too many toys to fit in the cubes then they have too many toys. There are a few larger items in their rooms- a tool bench and basketball hoop in DS1's room and the block table and farm set in Ds2's room. When we have our next child the boys will move in together and they'll have to downsize.
There aren't toys in our living area really- the puzzles live in the TV cabinet and the shelves are set up with their work. They can each choose 1 cube to bring down out of their room in the morning, but the cubes are put away every day.
We don't have a family room or separate place for toys- their bedrooms or our living room are the only options, so bedrooms it is.
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Erin
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Stephanie_Q
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| Posted: July 28 2009 at 9:15pm | IP Logged
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I have a new rule for the toys in bedrooms. First, they are limited. Second, if it is not put away at the end of the day, it goes in MY toy bucket and the kids have to do an extra chore - cheerfully - to earn a toy back. Daddy has a downstairs toy bucket for those that don't get picked up before dinner. They learn to pick up their toys or they do extra chores. Either way, I'm going to end up with a much cleaner house! 
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4Real Forums : Mothering and Family Life
Topic: Toys in the bedrooms?
