I’m such a procrastinator. This post is three weeks late and the only reason it’s going up today is because I’m having my quarterly meeting with the Frugal Living NW contributors tonight and I don’t want Emily to think I’m a total slacker.
And honestly, dealing with toys and miscellaneous kid clutter is so difficult for me. I really want a home that contains only items that are beautiful and useful. I don’t like clutter, but for some strange reason, it’s still here. I clean out a room only to find it’s exploded two days later. Seriously, where did all this stuff come from?
Emily’s wonderfully inspiring post on managing toy clutter got me thinking about my own home and how I deal with my kids stuff.
About four years ago, my dear friends Rebecca and Melinda came over to help me organize and declutter our toys. I had watched enough Clean Sweep episodes (old TLC show on purging) to know that you start decluttering by gathering all like items in one place so you know what you really have and then can confidently start trashing stuff. So I gathered every toy and kid item and brought them into our rather large dining room.
It was horrible. The dining room was practically filled. My friends stood there in shock. We had so. much. junk stuff. And I’m not a retail toy purchaser. Really, I’m not. I rarely buy new stuff for my kids. But I did garage sale and apparently I was really good at it. Just like my clothing consignment sale preparation, this day was a wake-up call. I liked to accumulate things for my children, not because I thought they needed any of it, but because each item represented a good deal and a good deal should be kept. Forever.
Anyone else struggle with the “but it’s a good deal” disorder?
Since there is no treatment plan available, or at least not when I Googled it, I needed to come up with one myself. The cure? Be ruthless and get rid of stuff. It required a lot of self-talk:
“My children do not need this much stuff. Laura Ingalls had a homemade rag doll and a inflated pig’s bladder to bat around with her sister, and she wrote a successful series of children’s books (yes, we are reading Little House in the Big Woods). I don’t want to spend my adult life managing all this plastic. MUST PURGE!”
Do you struggle with this too? Do the toys and random parenting paraphelia feel like a noose around your neck, sucking every ounce of motivation out of you? Do you have secret fantasies of just torching the place so you can start over (with the children at a safe distance, of course)?
If so, join me in just taking care of it (without committing a felony).
Here’s my plan: I’m taking five days and assigning a task to each day. Just one. No more than about 30-60 minutes of work for each day, otherwise no one task will get accomplished. Even with distractions (food, poop, discipline, more food, whining, discipline, more food), the task can be completed in one morning or afternoon.
Think though the types of “stuff” you have in your home and fit them into five categories. Here are my five categories:
- DVDs, VHS, all media “stuff” (including game systems) and costumes — okay, this is really two categories, but they are small and can be dealt with in one day
- arts & crafts items
- kids room items — mostly books and personal items (stuff that belongs to one person, not the family as a whole)
- family room items — this is where the majority of our toys live
- outdoor items (toys, bikes, trikes, wagons)
Some of my categories are groups of items, some are locations. Obviously, my categories will not work for you. I could easily add boy toys, girl stuff, and educational items as categories, but these will be grouped with the ones listed above.
Assign a day that you will purge the living daylights out of that category. The goal is to finish within ten days from now (June 25). Look at your calendar and figure out what days you will be home and make a date, in pen, to deal with those items. Here is my schedule, based on when I will be available:
- June 16 — DVDs, VHS, all media “stuff” (including game systems) and costumes
- June 20 — arts & crafts items
- June 21 — kids room items — mostly books and personal items (stuff that belongs to one person, not the family as a whole)
- June 22 — family room items — this is where the majority of our toys live
- June 23 — outdoor items (toys, bikes, trikes, wagons)
My ultimate goal is to have only the toys that my kids use frequently and will allow me (and the kids) to actually enjoy our summer as opposed to spending all our time picking up the house.
Next, figure out where all the purged items will go. I decided a long time ago that holding a garage sale just wasn’t worth the work involved for me, not because I don’t like making money, but because I rarely get around to actually hosting one. Instead, I just stored all the junk in my basement, creating another mess and headache. I’ve just resigned to not making money off my stupidity and giving it away — call it another example of Dave Ramsey’s “stupid tax.”
I must confess, I do have this inner spiritual battle every time I am giving something away, wondering if the recipient actually needs it, if that group or person is truly God’s intended recipient, or if I should sell the items and give the money to a starving child in a third-world nation.
Told you, I have a disorder.
After I’ve gotten over myself, I just drive the stuff to the closest Goodwill drop-off and I am here to testify that I feel so good afterward. I don’t even wonder if the Lord is using my stuff to bless the world (told you, I’m full of myself sometimes). It feels so good to not be thinking about it anymore.
Make sure you have a large garbage bag and a large (very large) box available to sort the items. You are allowed to sell stuff on Craiglist or ebay, but you absolutely must deal with it in a timely manner or else I will come to your house and force you to donate it. And if it alleviates any pressure, I am not going to sell anything. It’s all going to the dump, Goodwill or the closest Pregnancy Resource Center.
Lastly, decide if your children will do this with you. If you have the energy, you can make this into a fantastic lesson on the value of things and the type of life your family wants to live. Model how to make decisions about the usefulness of an item. Or, if you’re just too overwhelmed, send them all to Grandma’s or lock them outside and do it yourself. Then you don’t need to hear the tearful protests when you start recycling the homework, doodles and Sunday School handouts. I’m sure my kids will be in front of the TV.
So, who’s with me? Who is going to devote five days to ridding your home of unneeded toy items to allow your family to have a relaxing summer? I am planning to post my updates each day next week (Monday – Friday) and I will open comments to all of you to share your decluttering results!
If you will be joining me in this challenge, leave a comment with your upcoming decluttering schedule — dates along with categories!
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I can really relate to your article. I was feeling really down and overwhelmed by our house. It is clean but there was entirely too much toy clutter. I watched Peter Walsh, the organizing guru, and he said cleaning clutter takes us an additional 40% of our time to clean it and put it somewhere….I got the kids together and we cleaned each room and got rid of 2 giant boxes and I donated them immediately so I wouldn’t be tempted to keep them (or have my kids talk me into keeping them..) I have to admit I feel much better. I never thought about the toys again once they were gone. None of us have. And, we have a rule that every time a birthday is coming, we must donate 2 – 3 toys the day before.
Now, to conquer the paper clutter in our house….that is a really big problem for me…ugh!!
Oh Angela, I love how you’re purging this week! I’m a LOVER of purging and make it a quarterly day of bliss. Actually, the bliss part is how awesome and clean and (almost) Pottery Barn catalog-worthy my house looks. For a day. But that day is so amazing. My biggest problem is that our house is tiny tiny and the members of our household are MANY (and growing). Sigh. Time to make our own rag dolls and inflatable pig bladders. That would be the life!
Thanks for the inspiration! I need to work on this too. It made me smile as I too have given myself the “Laura Ingalls talk” about how they had so little, but were very happy. So wish there was a “toy library” where we could check out toys and then return them. I told the kids that this year when we go to garage sales they can still pick out toys, but they will have “expiration dates” on them and we will give them to goodwill or to a friend when the date rolls around. They have the option of giving away one of their current toys if they don’t want to give up the new one by the time the date rolls around. This helps keep things in check as otherwise the toy bins can get out of control too fast!
Angela, you’re such an inspiration…you’re so transparent!
If you’re reading these comments today, while you’re going through media: we found a great solution to DVD clutter: get a zip case which holds dozens of DVDs, then cut out the paper cover from the DVD case to fit in each slot and keep its DVD behind it. Then we threw out a huge pile of covers. This was hard for me, as I thought “oh no, if I ever want to sell that DVD at a garage sale, I won’t have the case” but then I realized I’m actually not selling those DVDs, and now our entire collection is in one small spot…very transportable for long trips even. Good luck on the clean-out today!!
I believe covers can be recycled-that always helps me throw away, if it can at least be recycled! In Hillsboro the recycling area behind the big Good Will on TV Hwy-next to the bowling alley takes these (across from Fred Meyer).
I love buying my kids toys… I hate storing their toys! With the last post about toys we came up with a list of 5 toys each boy would like to keep…I gave it to my husband, because he LOVES throwing away their stuff! I told him anything not on this list was to go, and wouldn’t you know it he hasn’t done anything about it yet *sigh* My problem w/the list: the sets! I hate sets!!! My boys have 3 sets of trains! THREE!!! 1 Geo Traks set which contains HUGE peices and takes up TONS of room; Thomas trackmaster set – also HUGE; & Take along Thomas set. I want to get rid of (sell) the 1st 2 because they are just ungawdly HUGE and take up too much space!!! Plus the boys rarely ever play w/them! The Take along set is small and I would’t mind keeping it…but you put trains on the list and I’m overwhelmed 🙁 I’ve been trying to get my oldest ok w/selling his train sets, I’m pretty sure he’s ok w/it but I haven’t been able to get the right amount of motivation and clean space to take pictures of the dang things to sell, ugh… Yeah, the 5 toys/sets, seem like each dang one is a toy box full of crap…I think I need a different route :-\
Agh. I feel the same way about torching the stuff & starting over. ( Children & husband, photos & baby memorabilia out of the house of course. ) I have hang up’s over every little toy /clothing that has sentimental memories. Though I was grateful I kept my boys clothes as we just had a “bonus boy”. It’s hard knowing what boy toys I should keep with the new baby & what to let go of. And with 5 kids I only have 1 girl & it’s hard to let go of her barely used clothes ( total waste right? My new baby will be #4 on boy clothes. How could I only use this once. Maybe I’ll just hold onto it…..ugh!) My other issue is school papers! “This one is when he learned about the Great Coral Reef. How could I throw that memory away?! ”
See- I too have problems!
SO here it is
FRI – Office –> school papers!
Sat.- Office —> rest of school papers/ craft goodies/ old bills
Tues.- Boys clothes/ shoes & linens
Wed. Girls clothes ( sniffle sniffle)/ maternity stuff ( waaaaaaaahhhhh)
Thurs. – toys/books /audio& visual ( old video games to swagbucks!)
and FRI 6/24-SAT6/25 GARAGE SALE. Donate left over at 1pm on Saturday.
Somewhere in there I have to organize my coupons too : )
Good luck to us all !
I heard a good idea on school papers/creations. Take pictures of them-monthly or whatever time period works for you-then you still have the memories, but far less clutter. Granted, even though I like the idea I have yet to get around to doing it (and my son is going into 6th grade-I am way behind). For those of you who still have young children-try to get started now-don’t get way behind like I am!!
I don’t remember if it was on a blog, or what, but a few months ago I read something somewhere that basically suggested going through your house and only keeping the things you would take with you if you were to move overseas. That is a little extreme for me, but I’ve been keeping way less using that mentality than I did when I just went through to “get rid of a few things.”
I don’t have much time the next week or so, but here’s my shortened plan:
Mon June 20th: Living room (magazines/paper clutter; toy box) and front closet (mostly shoes)
Tues June 21st: Son’s room (toys!!!; clothes)
Wed June 22nd: Daughter’s room ( clothes; toys aren’t a problem yet, thankfully!)
For me, I don’t buy my kids any toys, they get ENOUGH from grandparents alone!!!
So, I have a hard time getting rid of stuff that other people have spent their hard earned money on. But you’re right, it’s choking us. We must purge!!!
This is definitely inspiring.
I almost never buy things for myself, but I am an absolute sucker for stuff for the kids, Especially if it’s a good deal.
I have a hard time getting rid of things if they are practically new. It just seems wasteful, even though logically, the waste is to have a like new toy that isn’t being played with taking up valuable space.
I also have this issue where I don’t want to donate a toy that doesn’t have every little bitty piece it came with. I also don’t want to throw away little bitty pieces because they might go with something…somewhere.
Oh, and I don’t just want to throw things away because that seems wasteful And bad for the environment.
I have been trying to really think about what gets played with, and I do have a whole load ready for our church garage sale, but I know I’m only scratching the surface.
Thanks for the thoughts and the challenge. I’ll keep trying, too!
Me too!
I am so like that with “pieces” also-I have a whole pile of unmatched ones & some items that are waiting to get rid of until I find all the pieces!!
I even have been that way with the little McDonalds toys-but am improving there at least, and am better at just throwing them away-only because I realize there are thousands of them out there & no one really even wants them (except the kids!).
We are having a yard sale this very weekend! Good bye junk!!!!!! Hello cash!!!!!!
My parents did this for me and my sister is doing it for niece; I find it really helpful in preventing clutter when it comes to toys. When the child wants a new toy, they must be willing to give one of the current toys away; a toy of their choice. Obviously they would never choose their favorite toy, but they always choose a toy that perhaps they don’t play as often with anymore. I highly suggest this! It works great! It always helps teach the child to give!
You are reading my mind. I’ve been on a purge mission lately. It’s like spring cleaning has finally hit becaue spring weather finally has shown up! We only have a living room, no family room and I just purged half the toys in that room. My kids’ rooms got purged, although not as much as I’d have liked but they did help so I figure I have more clutter but they have more life skills and in the grand scheme of things, they really won’t live here forever. Sigh. My last mission is the two year olds clothes closet and their craft supplies.
I too have the problem figuring out where to get rid of my “stuff” (and yes I need to badly also), if I know it will be used/useful I am happy to give it away, but it is difficult and time consuming figuring that out.
Here is one point that may encourage you-if you donate it and itemize it on your taxes you will actually come out ahead money wise. At garage sales you can usually at best only get about 10% of the value for an item (IF you can sell it), itemizing on taxes gives you about 30%-of the inflated values they allow you to claim (more like regular second hand store prices). Also garage sales are VERY time consuming-although if they motivate you to get rid of STUFF, I consider that very helpful also. After that however, under no circumstances allow yourself to take things back into your house!!
I have been in super purge mode lately trying to get the house ready for my husbands return from deployment. It’s crazy how much stuff we’ve always had packed into our house and how much of the detail cleaning I always missed/skipped. I’ve have already done the rest of our downstairs purging over the past couple weeks but your post has officially inspired me to tackle the kid’s toys tomorrow. We have waaaaay too many little junk toys and hopefully by this time tomorrow, I wont be saying that! 🙂 Thanks for another inspiring post!
So I have this problem bad!!!! Thank you for Wording it perfectly!!! Kristi I had a yard sale last weekend and also feel as if I could have another one. I feel like it’d be embarresing to do it again . . I mostly wanted to say to donate all kid toys and clothes to the foster care system. I can’t remember what it’s called but I donated all my left over clothes from my last yard sale and they were so thankful!!! I will be making my schedule for sure because I just found out I have another one on the way and have no room in my house for a third baby!!! Thanks for the encouragement!
We’re about to move for the 4th time in 2 years, and I’m finally figuring out how to get rid of stuff once and for all. I have 5 kids–boys 9 & 7, twin 5 yr old girls, and a baby, so I told my big kids that they could keep 6 boy toys/sets and 6 girl toys and we got rid of the rest. We sold most of it at a recent consignment sale, and made a fair amount of money.
It was easier just to say “it’s not on the top 6 list” to everything else, instead of having to decide for every item. It was kind of backwards–deciding what to KEEP instead of what to get rid of.
We kept legos, bionicles, hot wheels, puzzles, dolls, lite brites (but if they get spread out again so help me they will go!), dressups, and I can’t remember what else.
This was about 3-4 weeks ago. My toy room is still a mess with just legos and dolls, and my kids are still happy. They haven’t missed anything, except once when my daughter was coloring in her Littlest Pet Shop coloring book and cried that she wanted to keep her LPS toys so she’d know what colors to use. What a silly reason to keep something!
I asked my 7 yo what he was most excited about in our new house, and he said “not having a toy room so we can’t have as many toys.” Seriously. Our kids need less so they can enjoy their stuff more.
It inspired me to get rid of some of my craft stuff, too. Less is more. 🙂
For the last several months I have been working on decluttering every space in my house in order to prepare for a garage sale to raise money for our adoption. We had our sale last weekend, but I feel like I could go through every room of our house AGAIN and get rid of more stuff. I hate the stuff! It’s everywhere… all the time! Maybe I’ll do this again, with you.. as it is, we have to have our house ready for our home study pretty soon… talk about motivation!
Love it! I have been feeling overwhelmed lately by clutter. I need to sit down and make a plan!
I’ve been working on decluttering lately. My two inspirations have been a book called Simplicity Parenting and a blog called I Heart Organizing (http://iheartorganizing.blogspot.com/).
I am tackling my clutter differently than yours. My schedule is one small area of the house a day. Yesterday was the book shelf and school shelf (we home school). Today has been the kitchen (but only half) tomorrow the other half. My goal is that even with breaks and traveling my whole house will be cleared of things we don’t use within a month. yes I will have boxes in the trunk of my car for awhile until I get to goodwill but I refuse to have a garage sale (hate them, hate going to them). BRING ON SPRING CLEANING!! YAY
OK….but do you know the Happy Valley Garage Sale is this weekend??? *faint*
You’re asking a lot….but I’m right there with ya…..I especially have a hard time letting go of those ‘good deals’ when they’re from really great toy brands like Melissa and Doug ect. Purge Purge Purge…. I guess having a sale would be better than going to one right? 😉
Let’s press on sistah! I will too!
Oh, the Happy Valley Garage Sale, how I love thee. I’m camping this weekend (not so great planning), so my house will be lighter this year…
Angela, loved this post, could so relate…please let me know if you are going to Ft Stevens near Astoria (that is where we will be camping this weekend) It would be fun to meet you and your family! ~C
I admit, I am guilty of the “its such a good deal”…
Garage Sales are my worst enemy. Just ask my husband!
I need to go through toys again and actually put the baby toys AWAY until the baby is big enough to use them. I dread going through toys – I can do the clothes just fine, but toys?? Yeah not so much.