A graphic of on one half a pile of cluttered toys and on the other half and organised shelf with toys on
Episode 317 – How to minimise children’s toys

If you ask any parent what their biggest clutter nightmare is, it will invariably be toys. But in a world where an excessive amount of toys is the norm, how do we ensure that they don’t take over our homes? In this podcast we’re going to discuss how to minimise your children’s toys.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
00:00
If you ask any parent what their biggest clutter nightmare is, it will invariably be toys. But in a world where an excessive amount of toys is the norm, how do we ensure that they don't take over our homes? In today's podcast, we're going to discuss how to minimize your children's toys.

00:29
You're listening to the declutter hood podcast bringing you tried and tested no nonsense tips and advice from the leading experts in decluttering and organizing your home. Now here are your hosts Ingrid Jansen and Lesley Spellman,

00:52
hello and welcome listeners. I'm Ingrid and I'm Lesley. If you're new to the declutter hub podcast, you're so welcome. What you'll find is that we try and find a fun factor in the serious business of decluttering. And if you've been here for a while, you know exactly what we mean. So thank you so much for listening. If you'd

01:12
like to get involved in conversations relating to this podcast, it all takes place in our Facebook group. So come and join our lovely, warm, supportive community. To find the Facebook group, go to declutterhub.com, forward slash group to find out more, or you can search for the declutter hub community on Facebook.

01:31
Well, hello listeners. We are excited to be here, and we're going to talk about toys, which is not Lesley's favorite topic, but we're going to give you lots of decluttering and organizing advice. So that is Lesley's favorite topic. So I think we're going to be good, right, Lesley,

01:47
yeah, but come before we before we get started, can we do a big shout out for Ingrid, who got the word invariably out after 27 attempts. Go on Ingrid. Show us. This is what our pre record, pre recorded go on,

02:04
invariably, invariably. And it's also it was invariably by it will invariably be toys. I mean, what a top Twister is that she goes

02:17
invariably, invariably. Love, belly. We could have changed the word, but I just didn't want to listen to it. Continue to struggle with that word, but you got it in the end. So I know you are English Maestro Ingrid, who's always incredible, so I'm not being mean, because she's so fantastic at English. So I just love it when she's not basically, because it makes me laugh. But here we are today to talk about toys. My least favorite thing. Thankfully, toys are out of my life for the time being, at least, anyway, so, but yeah, that doesn't mean to say that other people don't have a problem with toys and wouldn't like to discuss it. So I'm here for you. You do.

03:01
I do like toys. I love toys.

03:04
Podcast on your own, then, yeah,

03:07
but it'd be with no fun. It will be no fun. Lesley, we need to do the podcast together. But yeah, I do like toys. I think I like the organizing, the categorizing, the decluttering, the making a toy room. So much better for the children again, to play in. And I think that gives me great joy that I think, oh, wow, they've got all these great toys that were buried under lots of random stuff, and now they can enjoy the toys again, which, in the end, is what we want. And really know, taking the finding the nice things again, putting them together again, so they can make build a train, or build Duplo towers, or do lots of crafting and drawing. And even if it's scribbling on a white piece of paper, you know, if all the pencils are sharpened, they can do it. It makes me happy. And

03:58
unfortunately, things made you happy. I think what you know a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about the fact that decluttering is as much about reconnection with things as it is about letting go of things. It's about finding the good stuff, and that's the way that we certainly like to view decluttering. And a lot of people see it as a very negative thing, and we see it as a very positive thing, because it's about reconnection as much as much as it is about letting things go. And the same goes with your children's toys. You know the joy that you get from seeing children find toys that they loved at one time a few months ago, because and then reconnecting with them and seeing them again and playing with them again. It's lovely, and it might be short, it might be short term, of course, before they move on to something else, but that's what it's all about. So before we get started, we wanted to talk about the fact that early back in the day of the declutter hub podcast, we did three very, very in depth podcasts about decluttering toys. And so if you want a kind of, you know, a step by step guide as to how to do that, then. Those are the places to go, and we will pop the link to those podcasts in the show notes, so that you've got them. So that is where you're going to get a step by step guide. Today we're going to talk about some of the principles of minimizing toys. Now, we're not here to be all mean and stuff and go. Kids shouldn't have any toys because that's absolutely not the case, and that's not the way that certainly Ingrid and I have raised our children, but the you can get to a stage where you've got enough, and there are principles that sit behind toys which are about educating your children for the future as well. It's not just about the toy itself. It's about learning how to declutter and organize and categorize and reconnect and all of those important things. So today, that's what we're going to talk about, some of the sort of fundamental principles of toy organization, and it will spill over into parenting. Even though we are probably the least qualified people to give parenting advice, it probably may stray into those kinds of things. So you do, you you know, but we can only talk about the things that we have seen with our own experience and those of our clients where our clients have been overwhelmed, yeah,

06:07
for sure. And I think the first thing that we really want to talk about is that is really important to be an example for your kids, right? You can't just say to a kid, tidy up your room if you never tidy up after yourself. Either or kids tidy up the toy room. When they're really little. Everything is chaotic. They will just shuffle stuff to the side, and you'll probably go, ah, but I don't, but you so you need to set examples as a parent that also after you've done an activity, or even, you know when it's when, if you whenever you've used the table for something, whatever it is that you, when you finish with an activity, you tidy it up. It is after breakfast, lunch or dinner, tidying up and immediately putting those things in place. It's the same thing with tidying up toys, because when kids see their parents doing that, they will model that behavior and kind of start to understand that once they finish playing, they need to tidy it up, and it will never, ever be done perfectly. But that's not the point. The point is that they learn that when you finish with something, it needs to be put away. And yes, of course, if they've made a fabulous train set, and they've incorporated Lego and dolls and the whole thing, you're not going to go, right? You've had your hour. It needs to all be go back in a box. They probably want to play with it later or tomorrow. But it is about teaching. You know, when you've finished doing paint, the paint needs to be put away when you finished with a puzzle or with a board game, or whatever it is, it needs to be put away, and at some point that wonderful creation that after two days is completely forgotten about. Need the different items, need to go back into the different boxes, but you need to work with them. You can't just tell a kid tidy it up. You need to, especially when they're little, you're going to do the tidying up with them and be that example. Look, here's where the blocks go. And can you hand mummy all the blocks? Or can you help that hand daddy all of the the wooden train sets? Or can you help, you know, get all the stuff together. That's how you set an example. Because the

08:17
interesting thing is, Ingrid, and we said this so many times, is it's almost like different standards when they're at nursery or school than when they're at home. And so these principles of tidying up and incorporating tidy up time into into a play session or whatever, or a creative session or whatever, is ingrained in them at nursery and school, and it's, it's a non negotiable for the teacher, or whoever's leading that group to say, okay, case now it's time to tidy up, and the kids do what they are told and tidy up, you know? I mean, yeah, sometimes don't have to be led. And they kind of know, but that's because what you'll find at schools and nurseries and play groups and all of these kind of things, is that the organization and categorization is second to none. So the the organizational principles have been set in place so that it's easy for the children to know where things go. So that's what we're trying to replicate at home. So as well as trying to create some kind of structure into a playroom, we also need to have that non negotiable tidy up time, and so it's just doing that, but it can be hard because, you know, that's I'm not saying that it's not hard for teachers, and what do you call them? I can't think what they call teaching assistants and play group leaders and all that kind of was hard for them as well with a bunch of little kids, but that's their job, and that's what they're there to do, whereas, as parents, we're doing that as well as our probably, as well as our day job after a busy day with all other things that have been thrown at us, and trying to incorporate all these things together. So it's just that little bit more tricky. But yeah, you know, Ingrid's absolutely right, we need to lead by Exam. Paul, we need to show children from a very young age. And no age is early enough, as soon as they can get something out to play with it, in principle, less of a baby or something, they can put something away. Do you know what I mean? And so it's really, really important to be an example to your children. So that's going to be the first way we're talking about minimizing toys here. So we're going to probably this is more about minimizing disruption and incorporating resets into play sessions.

10:27
Yeah, absolutely. Now, of course, what we also want you to think about is, when you're going to embark on a decluttering session or journey in your in your toy room or your playroom, it's important to realize this is not only about making things tidy, right? We also have to think through and go. There are so many toys here. Do we really need to keep everything? It's not only about organizing what's there, but also going through items and go, What can I donate? What can I let go of? What is broken and actually, unfortunately needs to be put in the rubbish, or what is actually good enough for other children to play with and can be donated? Don't just go for the Okay, yes, I the toy room is a mess. I need to sort this out. I'm just going to buy lots of beautiful boxes and storage containers and I'm going to keep everything. No, I think the process definitely also needs to include decluttering.

11:32
Yeah, definitely, and we need to. So we need to open up that possibility again with our children, that kind of a less is more scenario, don't we, and and go through that process with them, because Are they able? Do you think that a child? I mean, you know, we talk about a child, a child can go anywhere from, you know, a baby, all the way up to some people are still playing with toys beyond into adulthood, right? And so, you know, we're spanning a lot of different age groups, but at what stage do we feel that a child is able to make their own decisions and can make an informed decision about whether something is going to suit them for their current life? And so it's always interesting, really, when we're talking about children, because it's like, when do you then, as a parent, make decisions for them, and when do you incorporate them into the decision making, and almost do the decision making with them, and when do you leave them to it completely? And there's an evolution with that in the decluttering journey. But I think that you know that, because it's going to be very different, you know, you've got some very, very, you know, sort of strong willed three year olds, who will, you know, kind of guilt trip you into not letting things go as a parent. And then you've also got on the opposite side of the spectrum, you've got children who will, you know, defer to you and say you do what you want, you know, you just do what you think, more more dad or whatever. So it's really hard to find that sweet spot, isn't it? But I think for me, it's all about incorporating the children and explaining this goes back to our leading by example. Yeah, it's very much, you know, it's got to be a collaborative process, which involves assessing and evaluating the things that you've got for their usefulness. But in general, with toys, it's about, it's not just about usefulness, because every toying principle is useful, like you could if children are doing creative play, they could play with everything. They could play with everything, right? But it's like, but are they going to when are the volumes too much? It's a kind of quality of a quantity scenario, really. So there's so many principles that get thrown out of the water a little bit when it comes to toys. Aren't there? Because you just have to make a value judgment on things, don't you? Yeah,

13:46
I tried to think back when, when my kids were little, when I kind of, and I can't really remember what the tipping point was, but I felt at one point now I need to start involving my children and like, kind of say, okay, you know, let's go through your toys. Break it down, obviously, in in categories. We didn't say, let's go through all of your toys today. But let's go and look at this, at the at the soft toys, and see which ones near tell me which ones your favorites are. And it before that I would have made that decision, oh, that is looking, you know, falling apart, or it was bad quality, or they never look at it. And I would kind of declutter as I went along, but at some point I felt I need to involve the children with the decision making. And I can't remember what age said was, but it, it gradually happened. And at some point I then when, when the kids were, were older, they I kind of went up in their room, and they were like, Oh, by the way, I've got some stuff from mom that I no longer want. Can you have a look at it? And she it and just make sure that this all seems like the right thing, and can you help me decide where it's going to go so it kind of graduate, but I practice that from a very young age.

14:53
I think, you know, I think when it comes to children, we've got to think about the strategies that we're going to employ with them. Yeah, and I think, you know, we've done a podcast about the numbers game a little while ago Ingrid, and you know, we'll pop that podcast into the show notes as well, because that's a relevant one. Because I think that playing the numbers game, which is what we like to talk call it, is potentially useful with because I think it's quite difficult to evaluate something's usefulness to you when it's just a kind of dinosaur, one dinosaur compared to another dinosaur, compared to another dinosaur, they're all kind of got validity, right? And so perhaps it's like, you know, we've got 15, and these numbers are not uncommon. You know, we've got 50 little dinosaurs. We're going to choose 3030, of those to keep, and 20 to let go of and so, and that kind of gamifies it a little bit. And we know that gamification works with children, so perhaps employ a kind of numbers game with children. If you're struggling for a child, if the child is struggling to make a decision based on how useful or how connected they feel so that toy, or whether you know, obviously there are easy things, you know, like they've grown out of it, they don't want to play with it anymore. But if it's something that potentially is useful, maybe the numbers game might work. So I think it, I think it's really hard, and I think it's so different for different children. We get this all the time with, you know, when my clutter fairy team are going out and working with clients, and, you know, a parent will often say, Should I have my child here, or should I declutter their playroom without them being here? And only you know your relationship with your child and how connected your child will be to those things. And obviously, as parents, we're not going to wrestle away something that we feel, that our child feels, is particularly, you know, really precious. You're not going to do that because we're on a hiding to nothing there, aren't we, but I think that we do need to be able to make some decisions. We make a lot of decisions for our children other walks of life, and I think decluttering toys is something that's actually more simple than some of the other decisions that we wouldn't give a second thought to making for our children. And so we have to kind of think about that. We have to be the stronger one, because that connection with toys for children and their little personalities can be strong. You know what I mean? Like, I've got three, three children, and they would have presented in very different ways. There was somewhere I would have felt like I could have got away with, you know, doing it for them and the others were there was no chance. It would have been too hard. I know how to incorporate them into the decision making. Otherwise my life wouldn't have been worth living. So, yeah, it's a personality thing, really, isn't it? Yeah,

17:29
absolutely. And I think what really we're talking about strategies like to incorporate, just you mentioned a numbers game. I think what also can really help is to kind of go, Okay, let's think together where we can donate these toys to right? So not just go it disappears from this house, but which other children can we make happy with these toys that we want to donate? Which can they maybe go back to your school so the younger kids can play with it? Do we know a nice play group that could use some of it? Do we could know a good charity that we support as a family, that we can send the toys to, and I think, you know, having these conversations about things come into the house. So, you know, there's lots of stuff here. There's loads of children who don't have toys to play with at all, or very, very little. Can you find some toys that you no longer want, that we can make somebody else happy, that can, I think, also be a very good strategy to talk to the kids about. So not just we're gonna throw it away or but more go in the in the realm of show me what stuff you love to play with. And let's think together where the items that you you know you've outgrown or whatever, can go then, and

18:44
I think it's really difficult. I mean, obviously some people listening to this podcast are clutter free. There are a lot of people here who want to fine tune decluttering or fairly clutter free. May have a problem with kids toys, which invariably is a problem for a lot of families, because they come in at a rate of knots. There are some people who've got a clutter problem throughout their whole house, and so they struggle with the decision making with their own things. And so you know, how then can you make decisions for your children? Because the emotional response to things like toys is ramped up a notch. So in our roadmap, for example, toys comes very near the end of the roadmap, because the emotional connection that you feel as a parent for lots and lots of different reasons. Sometimes we buy toys for reasons like we feel guilty because we've not spent much time with them or, you know, that's what we do. You know, we want to appease some situation, so we buy toys or gifts or whatever, for different reasons. And so letting go of those things, the emotional connection is hard, the emotions related to that. So these decisions are not easy. So don't you know toys is hard. It's hard emotionally because it is about our most precious thing, which is our children. And so you know the it goes up a level and it's hard. Large because the volumes are typically so high, it's hard logistically, because we've got to, you know, we've got this horrendous scenario with piles of toys in the middle of the room all need to be categorized into sometimes 30 different categories. And you know what I mean, and then you've got all these things left over at the end that don't belong to a category, and it's just like, You know what I mean? So it's a hard thing. So this is not something to do at the beginning of your decluttering journey. If you're doing your whole house, leave the toys to Leto, yes, tithe them up. We've all got to do these tidy UPS all time with toys. We've got to do it every day. If we've got a playroom or if we've got an area in kids bedrooms or in a living room where toys are stored. We typically have to do this as part of our daily resets. But don't underestimate how involved a toy declutter is. We would leave it if we were doing a whole house with the clients, or fairly late on in the process, our members, in our in our membership roadmap. It's fairly late in the process, and for the reasons that we've mentioned. So this is not something for the faint hearted, is that? Mm,

21:03
for sure, for sure. But what we know is that once kids have a tidier playroom, they actually play more and well, play better, but how? Who qualifies better, but they enjoy the toys more? And I think when you've got a lot of toys, one of the things you could do is do a bit of toy rotation, can't you? Lesley, yeah,

21:26
so toy rotation, it's an interesting thing, really. I mean, ideally, it just depends. So it depends on the space that you've got and how committed you are to Toy rotation. So if you've got a playroom or an area for toys. If you've got a limited area for toys, toy rotation works really well, and because you can take siphon Sun stuff off, put it into boxes, leave it categorized, and then swap those toys over. So what you've what you've got is this constant rotation of new energy and new connection with things. So this idea that we spoke about before, where, where kids love seeing things that they've not seen for a while with toy rotation, if it's done well, and we're going to talk about that in a moment, it can be really exciting for the child and for you, and you can feel as if you're getting your money's worth as well. Of all this out of all the money that you spent on these toys. But you've got to be realistic, haven't you Ingrid about your own ability to maintain a toy rotation system? Yeah,

22:31
yeah. And I think that's what we see a lot. You can't just randomly chuck some stuff in a box and go, I'm going to rotate them. You know, it needs to be categorized and organized. And of course, you probably, you want to probably incorporate some sort of every month or every six weeks. I need to spend a couple of hours deciding which category is going to come out and get all the bits and mops together, because as soon as toys get muddled, and you've got the shops and the Lego and the train set and the doll bits and all muddled up, nothing gets played with, like because it's it's here there. It's chaos. It's chaos. It's like trying to make a meal when you've got your ingredients in five different places, I mean. And then you have to rummage through six cupboards first to find all the things, same thing. So if you want to do toy rotation, you actually have to be quite organized and go, Okay, right? I'm going to take all of the shops in the cash register and the fake money and the Lolo out, and I'm going to put them in a box altogether. This is for playing shops. Out comes the books to be stored elsewhere, either high up in the toy room, in another room, in a in an area, in a cupboard, whatever. And now in comes the, I don't know, the animals and the dinosaurs and all of that. And we can and farm set, and we can play farms, but you can't then have, you know, three of the cows and three and Tony of the dinosaurs in with the shops, because then still you can't do proper This is now a zoo, and we're doing the farm

24:08
exactly without that would probably completely freak you out, wouldn't it? To do a farm animal in a shop with a register, you wouldn't like that, even a dinosaur. It is not shop day. No cows can come into our shop today, and the kids will be like shot in the the cow across the top of the cash register and English having a nervous breakdown. But yeah, that wouldn't go in your world. No, no. And I've never done toy rotation, but I think, you know, to be fair, I've had this space to incorporate kids toys, I kept quite on top of a bit of my decluttering perspective, although my kids had a lot of toys, right and so, so I've never done toy rotation, but I know that I probably wouldn't have been successful at that. I wouldn't have been successful at remembering to incorporate that, because that's a big additional job. To do so, I would say toy rotation is only for very organized people, or people who are very short of space, who've got an overflow space that you can use. So if you're feeling overrun with toys, it's nice to siphon some stuff off and then rotate, but you've got to, you know, you've got to understand your own behaviors and whether or not you're going to maintain that because loads of people, loads of parenting, things like rotate toys, you know, it's the same as decaling cereals and labeling things. It's like you there's additional effort. Have we got time for additional effort on top of what we're already doing, trying to just get through the day with these things really important to know about Lesley, let's

25:41
do a break. I think we've we're like, whoo. People are listening, or might be going, Wow, okay, that's a lot. Let's go for a break. We've got lots more after breaks to see you soon. Hi everyone. Welcome back. We're talking about toys and toy rooms and how you can minimize your children's toys. And one of the things I think we want to talk about next is it's really important to go through your toys regularly and be selective on what you're keeping currently, but also what you keep for other children that are younger. Because, you know, lots of people have second, third and four children, and they keep not only clothes, but they also keep, you know, and baby stuff and all of that so but they also keep toys for child number two and child number three, and they they're handed down over the years. Now, a wooden train set probably won't have a lot of wear and tear, and you can probably use for a very, very long time. But there are toys that sometimes are kept and you think, oh, maybe we should be really going a bit more for the quality than the quantity, right?

26:52
Yeah, definitely. And there's certainly some toys that, as a parent, drive you're completely insane. I'm definitely ditching that. You know, those things where you just like, enough of the noise of this, you know what I mean is that me, where you just like, I literally hate that toy. So when I was when I was used to do a lot more decluttering for clients, I remember I traveled one day from Liverpool all the way to Manchester, which like 35 miles across the motorway, and the toy had got stuck and kind of together, and it was just, like, going off, like, I was on the motorway, so I couldn't stop for like, 45 minutes or whatever. I was, like, driving me completely insane. So, yeah, so I think there are, there are definitely toys that unilateral as a parent, you can just go, yeah, yeah, oh, sorry. Just got broken. Got broken one day, don't we? We've only talked about our lack of love for things like glitter and sequins and stuff, haven't we as well, where we don't really encourage that kind of play as well. But no, you do have to be selective. You can't keep everything, because there's always going to be a new inflow of toys. And so if you keep all the old ones from child one and child two for child three, and then child three gets more. It's just like a crazy amount of toys. And honestly, the volumes of toys are crazy, and children often feel overwhelmed. And so we are lucky to see how and we see you see on these makeover shows, and these makeover shows on TVs, which are completely crazy, because they just literally have got all the toys outside in a in some kind of storage unit or whatever, haven't they? Because never any toys in their bedrooms. But you see how excited the kids are to see clear spaces. And we have to, we have to remember that. You remember when, when we were kids? You know, yes, I had toys. I was an only child, right? But, you know, I loved my stick. I can remember the toys now. I can remember the stilts. I can remember the pogo stick. I can remember the one massive, cuddly toy that I had for, like, years and years, and you can remember the tiny tears. But I didn't have 25 dolls, like they do now, I might have had two or three or something like that, to just mean, I was very lucky in a privileged childhood, you know? I mean, but the volumes nowadays, yeah, are crazy. And, you know, if we, if we look at ourselves as adults and project that onto children, and we look at how overwhelmed we are with our own stuff, and then we magnify that for the children, and so we just have to really think that through. Is this the right thing that we're doing? Are we teaching them the right thing at five years old by having this huge influx of stuff and all these choices that they've got to make? But definitely be selective in anything, definitely the hand me downs, but also in the in the initial volumes as well. Yeah,

29:37
yeah. And that, I mean, I think then that comes into the next point we want to make as well. Toys come in constantly, constantly from us going into the shops and thinking, Oh, I'll get that magazine, or oh, there's a new toy, or oh, we feel indeed guilty that we weren't there for their show at school. So let me. Just buy them something. And on top of that, we've got the birthdays, we've got, you know, the Thanksgiving and Christmas and all of those celebrations. Then we might be people who kind of, if they're a big event happens that we get everybody toys. The influx is absolutely constant, and we just really have to limit ourselves and probably also give out that message to the people, or, in the fact, to the family around us, who might, you know, go overboard, because it's the first grandchild and they hear they come with a whole car full of stuff, of toys, the bigger, the better. Now much me, you get in there to but I don't want this because I I am overwhelmed with the toys, but kids are overwhelmed, and I'm actually trying to declutter here. So can you then work and have these conversations, which are not easy, but can you establish some, some some, some boundaries here?

30:55
I know. I mean, I suppose that I'm, I'm closer, actually, to grandparents and then I am to parenting, probably now, and I can imagine how it goes as a new grandparent that you, you know, you've not really engaged with toys for 1015, years, or whatever, depending on what age your kids are. And then you see all these new toys. You see the joy on your on your day out with, you know, to spend precious time with your grandchildren. You see the joy, and you want to be that fun time grandma that gives them sweets or the ice creams. You've all heard it a million times and so and that just becomes what you are. And so it's it's tricky as a grandparent, and then it's tricky as a parent, if you are on a mission to have a declutter time. If you are on a mission to teach your children to live with less or all that kind of stuff, or you've gone through this big declutter and you can just about cope with the amount of stuff that you've got in your house. At the moment, with the kids, it can be difficult to be that kind of I don't want you to buy them anything, Mum, you know, I mean, person can't it because everyone means, well, don't they? Everyone's doing it for the right reasons. Everyone's got, but everyone's got different or in different places of their life, and that's the problem. You've got this clash. So it's a question that comes up very regularly. We talk about communication, but this ultimately, is all about relationships, you know, and that's something that we can, can't we can say it's about communication. We can ask you and urge you to open up the lines of communication, to be clear about what you're trying to achieve as a parent or as a householder. But

32:35
it's not easy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can already see, you know if a grandchild comes along in your family? Lesley,

32:45
no, but I'll be fine because the park, imagine Steve. He'll have, he'll have like toys r over love the wagon, like turning up at the poor person's house with like a offloader. I can't even imagine. So I think it's gonna have to be me that's gonna be communicating with him, yeah, because he is a gift giver, you know, he loves it. He

33:06
loves He does? He

33:07
love he you know, some people are, they call it. I mean, it's like a millennial thing, you know, what's your love language sort of scenario? And I'm sure there are other things that he does nicely, but gift giving is definitely one of those. Do you know what I mean? You know, it's not for me, but it is for him. And so it's hard, isn't it? Yeah? And so, yeah. So that's our advice. Good luck with that. I know, I know.

33:32
I think also what is important, and we kind of very, very, kind of briefly mentioned it. You need to make decluttering and organizing a regular habit. If you want to minimize your children's toys, you have to stay on top of it. You know, doing a toy room once per year when the kids are 3456, and are constantly playing, there is not going to cut it. You know, you have to daily do a, you know, a quick tidy. Probably, you know, every week a bit of a longer tidy and probably every quarter or so do a kind of, let's start, go back to basics, and let's start from scratch, a little bit, reset it all, and really, kind of go through all of the different boxes. Is everything still in the right place. You can't just leave it and leave it, leave it. That doesn't also mean you have to do everything all at once, right? So if you're looking around in your toy room now, you're like, Oh, my words, I haven't done anything for a while. You know, to start with one box, just like you would start with one cupboard, one drawer, a couple of hangers in your wardrobe. It's the same in a toy room to start to put, you know what? Let me create a corner where we're going to put all of the coloring books. Let me find the shelf and all the coloring books, and I'm going to put a box under there and put in all of the pencils and pens. That's where you can start, you know? You can say, right? I've, there's lots of soft toys here. Okay, I've got a larger box. I'm going to empty it with all. The other random stuff. I'm going to start with putting all of the soft toys in there, and start to group things, right? And then you can actually put a sticker on it, saying soft toys, and say to the kids, this is where the soft toys go. Now they will do their best. They will, you know, try, and they will not do with it. Sometimes they will. A lot of times, they'll do it, but you need to train them and go, Hey kids, come on, let's put the soft toys to let's get them all together. And you will still end up on a very regular basis going through everything and going, how on earth has a plastic Apple gone into the soft toy box? Because it happens.

35:42
So, right, so let me ask you a question. So if you've got so you're a mum with a or a dad with a three a five year old and an eight year old, are you going to do that playroom declutter when they're in the house? Or not?

35:54
I would probably have, if the three year old is taking a nap, maybe get in the five year old to swimming lesson, and then with the eight year old, say, can you help mom? Okay, you help dad.

36:08
Okay, so we're thinking that eight year old is where the age that we start to incorporate them into the process. I

36:15
think with five year five year old already, I think the three year old is probably too, too small or and I would probably go, you know, every once more, if you do a bigger toy declutter, I would say, you know, see if you can get the grandparents. I mean, that was very difficult for me, because I lived here without any family. So for me, I really had to think about my moments. And I would go, Okay, can I or my husband go to the park with two of them, so the other one would have a couple of hours just to get some stuff done when they when they were little.

36:48
Yeah, so another question, as they're just keeping on your toes Ingrid, um, as a professional organizer, if the mum or dad says, we'd love the kids to work with you, how do you do that? Then? Are you happy? Would you prefer to do parents? Or would you prefer to do kids? Um,

37:07
when the kids are smaller, I would prefer to work with the parents, but I've several times worked with teenagers in their rooms because for the mum, it was too hard to work with the son or the daughter, because it would just clash well with me, because I'm, of course, I'm, I'm neutral. They were absolutely fine. Because I could also ask them questions that are not judgmental, and just go and I could just say, hey, you know, are you thinking about keeping that? Is it important for you? Well, if the mom asked that or that asked that question immediately, you know? So yeah, I do enjoy it. Of course, the parents are there, obviously, but not necessarily in the room. They're pottering around and do some other bits in the house, but they're around. But, yeah, I do enjoy that.

37:51
I think that. I think that my experience of that, and I would, I would agree with that, and it's and it's cute sometimes, as a professional organized to work with kids as well, but I think that what I found a couple of times is that because, you know, I'm the sort of clutter fairy or whatever, they were making decisions perhaps that they weren't that comfortable with because they felt like they needed to please me, and that's what I was there to do. Does that make sense? And so I think that's you've got to be mindful of that as well as to whether it's the right decision. So, yeah, no, but it's, but it is interesting, and it can be cute, and it's and it's good to teach and energize. I remember when Emma, one of our members, and her daughter, Lucy, did really they were like a fantastic example, right, of mum and daughter doing decluttering together collaboratively in the house. Great example. Now Lucy's like storming ahead. She's probably sort of mid teens now, isn't she, you know, storming ahead with her decluttering. It's very much part of her daily, not daily, but very much part of her life, isn't it? She knows that she wants to let go of things to allow more things to come in, and things like that. So and I think that's what it is. It's really about, you know, you impressing upon your children that you can't just keep getting more and more and more and more, something has to leave. So those conversations need to be had. I think definitely, you know, those conversations can be had prior to an influx of toys. So if there is going to be a birthday coming up, or a Christmas or whatever, where toys are involved in that, then you can definitely go, okay, that's fine. Here's your wish list for Christmas or whatever. And obviously that's a whole nother story as to how much of that wish list you buy. But if you want these things, what is going to leave this house to allow that to happen, and one has to be a prerequisite of the other. And so those kind of things, those kind of heart, which sometimes can feel a little bit harsh lessons, need to happen. That's what it's all about. Yes, Lesley,

39:52
you're absolutely right. I completely agree. And you know what, children who have less storage are not. Not missing out, there still is. Are plenty of toys to play with. There's still plenty of things to do for them. So yeah, let's tackle those playrooms, I would say. So just to reiterate

40:11
what we said at the beginning of the podcast is we have got a step by step guide to house about how to declutter your toys, and so we've got a nice, easy link for you. So go to decla com, forward slash toys one, declab.com forward slash toys two, with no hyphens and declutter hub.com forward slash toys three, and they will give you the three podcasts that you need to actually get the job done. So do check those out, also linked in the show notes as well for to help you along the way. So have we come out of this toys podcast on skate thing grid?

40:48
Well, that depends. I mean, listeners, have you learned a lot from this podcast, and are you now ready to declutter your toy with gusto? Um, we've given our best advice at the I think what we can give you, so we hope that it's helpful, but it's not because it's not about the decluttering alone, is it? It's about minimizing the influx. It's talking about other people. It's staying on top of things. It's not just the decluttering that's come to help you. It. This needs to be done from different kinds of angles. Definitely.

41:19
Well, I've enjoyed it, even though I'm not really a big toy fan. I've got through it.

41:26
I'm glad, I'm glad. Well, thank you so much for being your listeners, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Bye, everyone.

41:37
Thanks so much for listening to the declutter hub podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to us in your podcast player so you don't miss an episode and we'll see you next week.
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Episode 317 – How to minimise children’s toys

Episode 394 – The Hidden Story Behind a Hoarded Home with guest Eileen Stukane

Episode 393 – How a Clutter-Free Home Strengthens Relationships – A Valentine’s special

Episode 392 – The clutter advice I’d give my 30-year-old self

Episode 389 – Overcoming mobility challenges when decluttering with member Rory

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