A graphic of a chaotic children's bedroom with toys strewn all over the floor in need of tidying and decluttering
Episode 71 – Toys (Part 1) emotions

In part 1 of this 3 part series, we discuss the emotions involved in decluttering toys. There are so many emotions wrapped up in the toys our children have that starting a decluttering project can be daunting. In this podcast, we delve into some of the emotions we feel when keeping and decluttering toys.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter hub podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen, and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:29  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 71 of the Declutter Hub Podcast. I'm Ingrid. And I'm Lesley. If you have clutter and want to sort it out, this is to show for you, as well as the free resources on our declutter hub.com website, like the podcasts, checklists and guest blogs. We also have an exclusive area where we guide our members step by step to declutter their homes, we realise this can be very overwhelming. So we're there every step of the way with courses live q&a And the community discussion. Take a look on members dot declutter hub.com. In today's episode, Lesley and I are talking about toys. This is part one of a three part series. And next week, you can listen to part two and in two weeks time to part three, there is so much to say about toys that we decided to actually do three episodes on them. Now, if you do a Google search about toys, once the district keeps coming up, kids have 238 toys and play with 12 daily. In our work as professional organisers, both Lesley and I have seen our fair share of toys. Interestingly, Lesley doesn't really enjoy doing toys, but I really enjoy sorting them out. So the first question literally for you. Why don't you like to entice?

Lesley  1:51  
Yeah, I feel like I feel like I need to just hand this podcast over to you. And you can do all the talking about it. And I'm not going to have any input. But sadly, I don't necessarily enjoy Yeah, it's not my favourite thing. I do do it under duress, she says, because anybody that's got kids have obviously got toys. But I think the the very fact that you and I decided to do three parts you sat here, we plan this podcast out as we always do, we were gonna do it in two parts. It's so meaty, and so time consuming. And there are so many factors involved in it, we need to do three episodes. So huge apologies if you don't have any children at home and don't have any toys. But we just thought it was really important to delve deeper a little bit and to really give our insight into it. Didn't we have not answered your questions? To be fair about why I don't like doing them? Have I?

Ingrid  2:37  
No, not really, you made a start, but then kind of got sidetracked and under stuff. So Lesley, why don't you like doing toys?

Lesley  2:47  
I think a lot of it is because of all the parents out there and grandparents that have got toys in the home will know that. No sooner have you spent so much time making this beautifully organised toy room, play room, toast storage, cupboard bedroom, whatever it is that it kind of tends to get undone reasonably quickly doesn't that. So I do, I really liked the decluttering bit of it. But the organisation it's a very important part of it to get it to a state where it can be. But knowing that within a week, it may well it won't be back to square one. But it's certainly gonna go probably backwards unless you are quite meticulous at keeping it under control. So I think that's that's the thing, whereas other areas in the home, we know that they're going to stay like that for a while. And so I think it's a little bit you it can be a little bit soul destroying not for you know, for us, obviously we walk away and it's somebody else's home. But it can be soul destroying for a parent to invest so much time and energy into doing them and for your kids to then come home and just tip the whole box on the floor. But that's just the nature of kids and that's the nature of play. But as an organiser we like things to stay in essence because fun, don't we but that doesn't always happen with toys. So that's my reason I know as vacuous and pathetic as it is. That's the reason why toys are my least favourite thing to do.

Ingrid  4:03  
Oh, I didn't I just love doing it. Lesley. Honestly give me a toy robot. I just don't know. I think it's because maybe it's because I could get some of my own and I really remember a lot of the toys to play with a really

Lesley  4:19  
Can I just say I'm not that old. A I do have kids. Be I'm not that old that I don't remember playing with things. Honestly,

Ingrid  4:31  
I just said that. I just really I like putting the Legos with the Legos and the puzzles complete and it just it's so satisfying. I just find it and it cheers me up all the colours and all the different stuff and it's so I don't know it really gives me tremendous satisfaction to leave a room so the child enjoys playing again because they can find the items. Everything is complete and everything works. pencils are sharpened, then the felt tips work. And they can really focus on the play and not rummaging through chaotic boxes when they can't find their bits that I want to play with.

Lesley  5:11  
No, you're absolutely right. And I feel as if I'm being a little bit of a Grinch now, because it'd be all negative and stuff about the playrooms. Because you're absolutely right, it does encourage more structured play, they can find the things that they want to find and play with. And that's really, really important. So it's as important as any other room in the house. And so today, we really wanted to talk about the background to ties and some of the honesty that we need with ourselves as parents or grandparents, and the sort of decisions that we need to make and just put a few things in front of you that you may perhaps not have thought about, before we start, the first thing is that we don't want to come across in any way as judgmental. And what we understand is that everybody has got so many different scenarios in the home, in terms of the number of kids in terms of the space that you've got in terms of what makes you tick, in terms of what your kids like playing with. So there's definitely not one size fits all. But there are some things that we see with regularity that cause problems in homes. And sometimes it needs a solution. And sometimes that solution can be quite hard to get to content,

Ingrid  6:18  
couldn't agree with with that sentiment more or less easily. Because we might come across as like, oh, we'll just have five toys and have nothing in your home. And that's not the idea behind this. We know that we love giving toys to kids, and we love treating them and we love the balance, I think is really important. I will speak about this more often, you know, where's the balance, it doesn't mean they can't have any toys, but it doesn't need the need to have 500 toys either because they can't find anything any more they want to play with. So let's talk about balance a little bit. Yeah, balance

Lesley  6:53  
is really critical. And that balance might be the space that you've got. And trying to balance that up. If you've got a two bedroom flat, or you've got a six bedroom home, you're going to be able to make very different choices in terms of what is in your home. Equally, if you've got a designated, even cupboard for toys, some people don't have that. So some people are lucky enough to have a play room or a storage room for toys, or a basement or an attic. So we're talking a lot of different scenarios. But ultimately, this space that you have is going to dictate the amount of toys that you can have in your home.

Ingrid  7:28  
Yes, and it's so funny because the smaller the kids, the bigger the toys for some strange reason. So especially when you're just starting out having kids, you look at this, you'd call it a plastic evey invasion. And that is definitely true. They all seem to be plastic, big and very, very noisy. And it's like, almost like, wow, what happened to my house. And then later, all these toys need to have decisions to be taken about. And you need to be realistic about the space you have. I never had a toy room, I would have loved to have a toy room, my toys were in different places in my house. And that meant that I had to be really smart with where I stored everything and what was being played with. So let's definitely touch upon that as well. In this podcast,

Lesley  8:16  
I want to talk about the spaces as well, because what I see so often particularly with you know, we've I've as you've rightly said, because I'm so old, even though I can't remember my children, Ingrid, I think there's a difference when your children are very young, because you have an idea of what you want life to be because again, as we talked about all the time, we look at Instagram, we look at Facebook, we look at Pinterest, and we think I want that beautiful play room. And if you're lucky enough to have a designated room that you can allow toys to be in. Often what so many people want to do is they want to create a play room. So here in the UK, quite often people will convert basement rooms or play rooms, if they've got that, that sort of opportunity. But what I'll say quite often in my this is only my own experience of it. But children tend to want to be where their parents are. They don't want to be on their own playing independently in a basement if mom or dad or grandma or whoever is upstairs in the kitchen. So they tend to naturally gravitate towards the hub of the home. So what I found and what I kind of encouraged a lot of people who you know, because sometimes I go into the stage where we're creating a playroom as well is unless it's very close to the hub of the home, it's probably going to be a toy storage area, rather than a room where the children are actually going to play. Now that's not the case for everybody. And some kids are quite happy or some parents will spend time in the playroom with the children. So that's a different sort of scenario again, but just know that sometimes a playroom is not necessarily where your kid's gonna want to be. So they're going to take the toys and they're going to bring them upstairs or to the kitchen or to the hub of the home, the living room, whatever that might be. And then I Hopefully, they replace them at the end of the day and put them back or you do more often than not.

Ingrid  10:05  
Yes, I think that's also a lot of times the important piece of the puzzle that's missing, that at the end of the day, if there is a designated area for toys, things don't get put back at the end. And then before you know it, kids have gone off to bed and you look around your living room. And there's like this devastation of toys and board games and puzzles, and soft toys and everything known to men, it catches on the living room floor. So as soon as I think the kids are old enough to understand that toys need to be put back. And that's what they really teach in school as well, I think it's very important at the end of the play, at the end of the day, you tidy up. So look at that habit from a young age with your children, as soon as they're probably three or four, maybe after dinner, say to the kids, let's work together for 10 minutes and tidy up some of the toys you've played before we go upstairs and read your book or whatever it is that you do, and get those little habits of putting stuff back ingrained in your routine and in your system.

Lesley  11:05  
Exactly. And I think that that's a really, really important point and what we hear all the time is, but they will go to playgroup or nursery or school and happily put things away teacher or the teaching assistant, come on, it's tidy up time kids do it, no bother no crying, no hassle. And ultimately, we have to as parents, and we have to not enforce that. But we have to encourage them children to do that. And it should be non negotiable. And because the thing is the difference at school is it's non negotiable, you know, we do, I don't know, half an hour play. And then we have 15 minutes of your time or five minutes had your time or whatever that might be. And it's non negotiable. If you don't tidy up, then we're not going to do the next lesson, or we're not going to do the next thing. And I think it's hard as parents because we get home at the end of the day. And it's like everything else with decluttering. With tidying up, sometimes it's easier for us to just do it ourselves rather than to go through the Battle of making that happen. And so therefore, we don't follow through on what we want to which is to encourage this non negotiable tidy up time. So it's hard. It's like the sleeping isn't it, you know, when they sleep, you know, we want to go to sleep patterns and try and get them to sleep overnight when the little things like that. But sometimes you're just so exhausted, that you're like, I'm just going to just get up to them because I can't listen to this anymore. And it's the same kind of thing. Sometimes we have the right ideas, but we don't follow through with them because life gets in the way. And because we're exhausted because we're tired, because we've been at work because something else stood in the way because an older sibling needs you because there's a million things isn't there that stand in the way. But if you can try and have that as a rule that happens even 50 or 60% of the time, then your children are not going to take the fact that you're going to tidy up after them for granted.

Ingrid  12:50  
Yes, I think so too. And even if bringing it in the right room is a start. So if you do have a conservatory, or a play room, in a basement, or upstairs or wherever in your home, maybe just say at the end of the day, let's take this empty basket and let's gather everything together and put it in the right room. Because that will already help tremendously with everything, looking and feeling a bit less cluttered and chaotic. And then of course, the next step is categorising and decluttering and organising. And we're going to talk about that in another podcast. But it's all these things that hang together with toys, you know, maybe a lot of parents, three decades do a lot of toys, because they really want to spoil them because maybe they didn't have toys themselves when they were growing up. And they are feeling so lucky. They now have the money to buy the toys for their kids and treat them like maybe their parents couldn't when they were young. But I think it's all about when there's too many when there's too much. It's never a good thing, is it?

Lesley  13:55  
No, I think it's when it starts to overwhelm the space and when it stops. Because what we see quite often in play rooms is that we see that the playroom or where the plate can't be used for that because there's just too many it's overwhelming for the child, or the can't get in, or the table that you've designated for craft is covered with all the things. So the psychology of toys is no different than any other type of clutter in terms of the emotions and the habits and the feelings that we have. You know, you alluded to that the fact that sometimes we do buy things for our children because we couldn't have them for whatever reasons. There's if you feel that there's an excess of toys in your house, and if you know that you're contributing to that, try and understand where that's coming from and whether that's actually been helpful, or whether it's been detrimental to the child's play. So I think it's things like that, you know, we're getting we're going into sort of deep psychology here and I don't really want to, we often see with our clients, there's a lot of guilt associated with leaving your children or letting somebody else be their carer for the day. And then you want to spoil them when you come home and give them what they want. On turn, of course, ties is an easy solution to that, isn't it? And it's one that we all of us go to, we bow to pressure from the kids, we bow to pressure, peer pressure, we bow to Facebook pressure, you know, all of these things like by this time, there's a media, all of these things are saying, This is the latest thing, the latest gadget, the latest toy, and we want our children to have the best. That's the nature of being a parent. But sometimes it can become overwhelming, and it can become counterproductive.

Ingrid  15:28  
Yeah, and I think it's also important to realise, when you're doing a bit of thinking about how you buy stuff for your children, ask yourself how the toys coined the home, is it birthdays? Is it Christmas? Is it the grandparents that spoil the kids? Is it you? Do you on your weekly shop automatically pick up a toy that's the latest new craze or gadget and put it in your trolley without even realising it? You know, a lot of things are ingrained in our habits in our systems, maybe you know, your your son, or your daughter really loves a certain magazine. And they've you've voted once for them, they absolutely loved it with all the little plastic stuff that comes with it. And the next one is that they really enjoy, they're going to buy it again. And before you know it, six months down the line, you've bought a magazine like that every week without even realising you've put it in your trolley. And I think it's all those things as well. However, think to yourself, how the toys end up in the house? Is it maybe a friend who's constantly decluttering her house of stuff, and gives her old toys to you? And you find it really difficult to say no, thank you, we've got enough, or is it may be a car Bucha you go to every once a month and you end up picking up a lot of toys for the kids, you think Oh, that's nice, I'm gonna get that for them. And then before you know it, every cupboard is overflowing, the toy was overflowing, and then it's gone over what you could handle. So it's not only about now thinking, What can I do about it, but also look at those patterns and those habits that you have?

Lesley  17:00  
Yeah, definitely. And you raised a very valid point there Ingrid about the fact that we're often not making decisions about those things that are coming in our house because they're coming from other people, particularly grandparents and aunts and uncles and as you say, friends that want to offload their stuff. And it's very hard, as you say, to say to somebody, I don't want that in my house anymore, because I've already got too much because it appears on grateful. So then we feel guilty about we feel worried about upsetting people. So we're back to the standard things that we have with all kinds of clutter. It's definitely worse with toys, because they're definitely things that we get kind of against our will you know, how many times do we hear people almost dreading their child's birthday because they know the influx of things that are going to come in. And it does appear ungrateful because of so many people who haven't got anything. It does appear ungrateful to say, well, I don't want 30 presents from the class and 10 presents from grandma and you know, things like that it does appear really ungrateful, but it is completely overwhelming to both you and your home. It's overwhelming in terms of what that makes you do in terms of routines and tidying up and the extra work that comes with that. And it's also very overwhelming to the child because they don't know where to start. And so it's interesting when you start decluttering, what a parent will say is that they play with that, and they play with that, and they play with that, which they do. But if it wasn't there, would it be the end of the world if they had an alternative? I think that's it, isn't it. It's just seeing that and looking at the space and compromising and working out what's important to me the stuff or the space. And I think really important to try and get that space for the kids to breathe and play effectively.

Ingrid  18:42  
And just to make it very clear listeners. I love toys. I'm really glad my kids have them. We've got everything like that as well. But it's also just I don't have 100 of everything. And I think that's apart from Lego. Lego is like has invaded my outlets. I think I've got about 100 Lego sets. But we love we all love it. We all play with it. And even what's very lovely and I don't mind sharing the story. I used to have Lego when I was a child. And my mum actually divided all the Lego up and then my sister got half and I got half. So there's still Lego here that we played in back in the 1970s and an 80s. So we have nothing against toys listeners absolutely nothing. But it is about thinking through what the children actually really enjoy playing with. And that can be loads of different things you don't they don't need to have everything under the sun available to them while they're only really maybe like doing puzzles or doing arts and crafts all the time. And they don't need to have 55 arts and crafts books five or six is probably plenty to keep them going for a while and once they're full then you can always decide to get them something new. And it was very funny because I was helping one of my Clients declutter her door to door book and activity books and summer annuals and things like that. And she's like, Oh, I'm gonna go on a holiday student, I'm gonna go to the WH Smiths or whatever. And I'm gonna get some new activity books, and I went, hold your horses. Look what we all found here today. They're like a third or a quarter done. There is still enough mileage in this book, she don't need to buy some more. But it's, you know, it was in her routine, we're going on holiday, I'm going to buy some crap arts and crafts books for the kids to do? Well, I wouldn't know. But we still have them from last year in the year before and the year before, and they haven't finished those.

Lesley  20:38  
But to be fair, the child will probably think a brand new book is more special than one that's already been used. And that's the problem. It's hard, isn't it? You know, again, you know, you're saying How did my kids have loads of toys? Yes, they absolutely did. We kept them in their bedroom. So they all had the toys in their bedrooms the whole time. But the space was full of toys, but it was never overwhelmed. So I never felt like my space was being compromised. And obviously, me being me, I did do a lot of tidying up with them. And after them, the point is you can have as many times as you like until you feel enough is enough. And I'm overwhelmed with the amount that I've got to deal with here. That's that's the issue. And that's where we're going. We are not the kind of people here as professional organisers that are endorsing minimalism, or having less than you need, have the right amount, but concentrate on the space that you have, and be realistic. And you'll have to make compromises. If you have five children, or if you have a two bedroom house. The other thing that's really hard as well is that you keep in things, either for a younger sibling, or for a sibling that you might have one day. And so it's all also in terms of the decluttering. It's hard, because you're never quite sure what's around the corner in terms of children, what your family is going to look like in a few years. And so you keep holding things long beyond their usefulness to your older child because you think they're going to come in. So we've got that, haven't we, as well, we cling on to things because we don't want to buy those very expensive toys again, there's so much psychology and emotion and habit involved with toys. And that's why we wanted to talk about it on this podcast. And we knew we'd never ever get on to all the other parts about toys, because we have to talk about that little bits of it.

Ingrid  22:19  
And of course, besides having toys, keeping toys for possible younger siblings, we also have course have the holiday season and the birthdays when a lot of children get a lot of presents, maybe from their class from their grandparents. And it's all of that stuff coming in. That is the perfect opportunity to maybe together with your child see, is there anything that they've outgrown or have absolutely loved so much that it's now broken and looks a bit tatty and can go. So maybe that's a good opportunity to learn with your child and say, can we make somebody else happy with some of these toys?

Lesley  22:58  
Yeah, I think it's a really important thing to do, isn't it? Children need to learn from a young age that you can't just keep having new, you either don't get new because you don't need it. Or you have to give something away to accommodate the new. I think that's a really important lesson. You know, we talk quite a lot about and we are far from doing parenting here. But there are some things that we see repeatedly, aren't we in terms of and people asked for our opinion, I guess, don't they when we are working with them? In terms of what can we do better? And that's one of the things I encourage your children to have routines to know about tidy up to know that you need to offload some things before more comes in, you know, there's not an infinite amount of space in every house. Again, it's one of those things that's hard to remember all the time, isn't it? There's so many things that you have to do as a parent, but ultimately the home and getting the home in good shape with good routines is really high on the list of things that you need to sort out.

Ingrid  23:52  
Absolutely. What I think it's an important question to ask yourself when you're starting to ponder now about your toys. Where are they? Are your toys in your bedroom? Are they in the toy room? Are they in the living room or the Conservatory in the home office? Where are they and can you maybe assign toys to a certain area. If you have a lot of toys, maybe you can decide okay of that the books are going to live in the bedroom because that's where they read all the time. And I'm going to create a space next to my dining room table because that's where we do the games and that's where I would like them to do crafting or no Hold your horses and glitter and paint is definitely a kitchen table job. So I'm going to find a little shelf in my kitchen where those items are going to live. So I didn't have the luxury of a toy room and my kids don't have very large bedrooms so that books are in the bedrooms and a couple of bits but a lot of the toys were downstairs. So I had a separate cupboard for puzzles and games and an Understairs cupboard where the dressing up lived and the paint That's such a lift in the kitchen. So I wish I had a separate toy room when they were younger. But it wasn't to be so I had to be smart and think about where I wanted them to play with certain items.

Lesley  25:11  
Now the smart thing would be to to restrict glitter play to play groups and nurseries and schools that would be a smart thing to do you know

Ingrid  25:19  
what? Glitter was not allowed in my house. I had glitter paint. I had glitter paint glitter, if they get like this activity books with like the feathers and googly eyes and the first thing I do is take a little glitter thing. Like oh, there was never hair there's never hear glitter is like your worst nightmare. And you know what? I don't like crayons. I have a thing about crayons never like crayons. I just fatty. I just find it so sticky and fatty and just always thought oh no, that comes on furniture or, or on my chairs. I'm not going to be happy.

Lesley  25:58  
That sounds like a phobia to me.

Ingrid  26:00  
Oh my I don't like I don't like crayons. I'm the Grahams in glitter. We're not allowed in my

Lesley  26:07  
house. Exactly. I was like, Oh my gosh, she's talking about glitter in our house that this can't be a thing, though, ya know, hats off to anybody who allows glitter in their house, but I was not one of those people to be fair.

Ingrid  26:18  
So anyway, Lesley, we both agree on the glitter then and me with my crayons. I think we can wrap up this episode now. Can we I think we've discussed all the most important things connected to decision making and being honest about your home and about your toys. Is there anything else you would like to add?

Lesley  26:35  
So yeah, it's just to go back to the idea of balance, isn't it to really think about balance and compromise. That's the absolutely vital thing with toys. And once it you, you know when it's tipped over too far, when that balance has tipped, and when it's got a little bit excessive on when you need to start doing something about it. And actually, the doing is easier than you would think it is. I think we're going to talk aren't we in the next? Well, I know that we're going to talk in the next episode about decluttering. And sometimes that's something that you really dread because actually, as a parent, you feel nervous to get rid of somebody else's stuff. So we're going to talk about that in the next episode. So please do come back and listen to part two. And I think English gonna wrap this one up.

Ingrid  27:17  
Yes, I am. So listeners, what is helpful are insights and ideas about toys and your home and your space and why we give so many toys and why the kids have so many. And we really hope it's helpful and that it makes you think about your own habits and your own ways you handle toys and maybe birthdays and holidays and buying stuff for your kids. So we hope this podcast has has given you food for thought. So thanks so much for taking the time to listen today. And if you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and tell us what you think about the show. We love reading your reviews and you can leave them on Apple podcasts stitcher or you can send us an email via support@declutter.com. If you want to let us know how you feel about our podcasts. We are also on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as at declutter hub, and we've got a lovely supportive community group on Facebook where we check all things clutter, you can search for the declutter hub community. We'd love to see you there and take a look at members declutter.com To find out more about our membership. If you don't want to miss the next weekly episode, please subscribe to the declutter hub podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and iHeartRadio. And it will pop into your notifications each Friday. See you next time.

Outro  28:42  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the declutter hub podcast. Check out declutterhub.com for more inspiration, and don't forget to tune in next week.
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