Creating a Minimalist Lifestyle: TOYS

American kids are spoiled & have too many toys. Mine included. It's partly my fault-I like toys. I don't think that I'm compensating for something in my childhood; I had toys, I had books, I had a skateboard, I had balls and mitts and ice skates and board games. I even had Fashion Plates! I don't really recall feeling deprived. We had neighborhood kids to play with and a park AND an ice arena at the end of our street. But fast forward out of the '70s, and I have to ask myself, "Why do my kids have so many toys?" I like finding great toys for them at rummage sales and garage sales, the grandparents buy them a lot of nice things for birthdays and Christmas, and with having 3 boys spaced 5 years apart-EACH-it means that we store away age appropriate toys in the basement. Justify much, don't I?

{stuff purchased from church rummage sale in 2010--the only thing we still currently own is the Sonic figure}

My boys have too many toys. Plain and simple.

{photo from July 2011, when we were TRYING to clean out for a yard sale. sigh.}

Brad & I have been battling with the kids and their toys for a lot of years now. We've tried various solutions like keeping only books in their rooms and then toys in the playroom.  The toys always end up spilling out of the very nice-sized playroom! The toys end up in the kitchen, in the dining room, and even in our bedroom. We then go and spend 2 hours "cleaning" the playroom (really, we're just "un-tornadoing" it, and yes, that's a word I just made up). What happens? About 1 week later, the toys are spilling out of the playroom and into every crevice in the house.

{photo of playroom in 20010}

I guess the problem is that yes, kids can have too many toys. How many toys is too many? I think if the toys are causing you stress in your household because the toys are everywhere and they never seem to stay neat or if you're tired of stepping on Legos in your bare feet (and I live with boys, so guess how many Legos we have?!), then you have too many toys. If your kids are just dumping the toys they have and not really investing any time with them, you have too many toys. If the kids stand in the middle of a room which is littered with toys and they claim they have nothing to do? Yep. They have too many toys.

{photo of playroom, Septemeber 2012}

You know the thing where you buy something for a 1 or 2 year old and all they want is the box it came in? Yeah. Big kids are like that, too. We spend so much time and money and energy trying to give them the right toy or the latest toy that we forget that they can just play with some boxes and a roll of masking tape--and spend all afternoon doing it.

So I'm setting out on a mission to minimize our toys. While I've promised Brad that throughout this journey towards minimalism I wouldn't touch his things, I made no such promise to the kids. They have shown me time and time again that they have too many toys because they are always strewn all over the floor. Time for a toy-intervention!