A splitscreen graphic on the left a pile of messy children's toys and on the right a shelving unit with the toys all organised and catagorised
Episode 72 – Toys (Part 2) categorising and decluttering

In part 2 of this 3 part podcast, we discuss decluttering and categorising toys. Categorising toys is a vital part of the decluttering and organisation process. There are so many categories to use, so in this podcast we discuss some of the popular ones and how to decide what should go where.
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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 Johnson, and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:30  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 72 of the declutter hub Podcast. I'm Ingrid. 

Lesley  0:35  
And I'm Lesley.

Ingrid  0:37  
If you have clutter and want to sorted out this is to show for you, as well as the free resources on our declutter hub.com websites, like the podcast 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 Dotty culture hub.com. In today's episode, Lesley and I are talking about toys. And this is part two of a three part series all about toys. And last week we spoke about decision making and being honest about toys. So if you haven't listened to part number one yet, we really suggest you do that first, before continuing with this part number two, and in this week, we're going to talk about categorising and decluttering, which is of course, my favourite bits, because I do love a bit of categorising and decluttering. And we need to talk about sorting and pre sorting first. So, Lesley, can you explain to us what sorting and pre sorting is? And what do you do when you do a toy room,

Lesley  1:50  
I think it's fair to say Ingrid that you're more of a pre sorter than I am a pre sorter in our day to day work as professional organisers. The thing is, there's no one size fits all, there's no one room the same, there's no one volume the same, there's no one person the same. And so every single project has to be tackled, whether it's by us or whether it's you independently looking at the circumstances around you. So sometimes it's sensible to presort. And sometimes it's sensible not to presort. But for the most part, I would go straight into decluttering first, but I accept that if you've got a play room that's already largely categorised and sorted and has got appropriate storage, then pre sorting might be a good idea.

Ingrid  2:33  
So what do you mean them with pre sorting,

Lesley  2:35  
what pre sorting means it's gathering like with like together. So it's pulling various categories, it doesn't need to be perfect categorization at this stage, it needs to be maybe broad categorization of gathering all the Lego together all the books together, etc. We're gonna talk a little bit more about those categories in a minute. But pre sorting means before you start to look at any decluttering at all, you're going to pre sort things. And so most of the places that I work, don't really allow that. And we have to kind of tackle it as you go, particularly with toys. And I think toys is definitely one of those areas where things do get in a complete model more than anywhere else in the house. I think that it's fair to say that people listening to this podcast would fall genuinely more into the chaotic side of things than they've meticulously organised. And so therefore maybe then toy rooms are in a little bit more of a model. And that's why the here listening to this. And so, in general, I think I would probably dive into decluttering first, but I understand that you can presort first as well. The benefits of pre sorting is that psychologically, you can then see the volumes of things that you've got, and you can make decisions. So we're going down a different strategy route here, aren't we? So where something's overwhelming and people find it very difficult to make decisions, perhaps we can go for a strategy of numbers. And so if you're pre sorted first, then you can see exactly how many you've got. And you can say, right, okay, let's restrict ourselves to 10 jigsaws, for example. So in order to do that, you would have to presort

Ingrid  4:07  
so if you do a toy room, and you don't presort and you see something that is either broken or whatever, then you take it out immediately. Yeah. Okay.

Lesley  4:18  
And I think to be fair, that's most of my decluttering where we talked about it before Ingrid on wardrobes as well. So you do pre sorted on wardrobes a little bit on the bed, whereas I don't and so, and there's no right or wrong way. It's what makes you feel happier.

Ingrid  4:32  
It's that I find it so fascinating, Lesley, because we do have different ideas about and it's fine. It's exactly what you say there's no right or wrong way. So if you've tried pre sorting before, it hasn't worked for you. Maybe you need to not sort and declutter and then sort later, or maybe when you've done it less this way, and by just decluttering things, but you feel you've never been in control of the of the project really well. Maybe the categorising in the pre sorting works. This is so interesting, really interesting. Of course, you know, when I'm in a toy room and I see something that's broken or falling apart, I'm not going to put it in the right category unless it's like the most loved toy in the whole room, which is then different. But I would always say that really, I'm really working with pre sorting. So let's talk about categorising, then, if you do it decluttering first and then categorising or categorising, then decluttering. I think it's really important that our listeners have an idea what kind of categories there are an interesting lesson, I actually started writing this down. And we have defined 15 categories, can you believe it, there is actually 50 different categories in toys. So we're going to go through them with you, what we think we find in our clients houses. And the first one is books. And I've actually put it under toys,

Lesley  5:57  
I think the important thing really with books is that we want books to be part of play, don't we, so therefore, that's why we put them in with toys. So we put children's books in with toys, we hope that they're going to pick up a book whilst they're playing, I think it's important to have those around and to have the opportunity for children to read books, because children play in completely different ways down there.

Ingrid  6:14  
We've also got puzzles and board games, puzzles can be 10 pieces, it can be 1000 pieces, it doesn't really matter, puzzles and board. I mean, you can even separate those out in different categories, but they normally live in one area together. So that's why we kind of categorise them together. So if you're sorting in your toy room, maybe create a corner where all the puzzles and board games live. I'm not talking about checking yet if they're complete or not. That is later if all the toys are muddled. You need to assign different piles to different categories. So it gets easier to then decide what can be decluttered or not.

Lesley  6:52  
I think the interesting thing about puzzles and board games is that they're normally a uniform, stackable shape. And so that's why it's brilliant to put them together, because you can put them into nice spaces and keep them all together. The next

Ingrid  7:04  
thing that we found was things like arts and crafts, Dr. DocBook sticker books, holiday books, paint playdough, pens, felted, pens, crayons, everything that has to do with arts and crafts, maybe even like I said, in the other podcast, the googly eyes, the little feathers, you can stick on things as a whole, you can put it in one category together.

Lesley  7:30  
I think the important thing about these categories as we're going through the main grid is that what we're trying to create here is logic. The important thing with any system is that it's logical to other people that come in to say if you're lucky enough to have someone who might help you to tidy up that it needs to be a logical system for everybody to understand. So by categorising in these things, these are logical things that should go together. Now, logic for one person is very different to logic to someone else. But these are the kinds of things that we categorise all the time and it's fair to say, Isn't it that our clients do struggle with categorization because we're starting from a place of complete overwhelm, and therefore is Where do I even start and so if you can start and break it down into these categories, that's a good starting point.

Ingrid  8:19  
The next one is dressing up kids love dressing up, they've got the frozen dresses and their princess dresses and the cowboy and pirate outfits and all of those things. That's kind of one category you want to stick together.

Lesley  8:33  
It's not an easy category to organise. We did a podcast didn't we around Halloween last year about organising fancy dress and dressing up so it is tricky because it's there tend to be big items and not many people have got space to hang them in a wardrobe or hang them on a rail and stuff and so yeah, it's tricky

Ingrid  8:51  
dressing up and shows pretend play. You know

Lesley  8:55  
pretend play tends to be the real thing that tips people over the edge because pretend play is all those huge things, isn't it like workbenches and sharps and Hoover's and trying to think of rolling turns and trolleys and doll's houses all of those things are all like pretend play and they're all huge things that really can't often can't have a home so they have to sit around the outside of a room or on top of something they're the things that often sit people over the edge

Ingrid  9:26  
or all the little bits that go when you have like a sharp you know, they've got like the cardboard boxes which which has beans and tins and they've got the mother prints and money and the cash register. No, it does Candice, this whole category can be very small or very big depending on your child's exact clan

Lesley  9:45  
and I think it is something where you really the toy has definitely got to justify the space that it takes. So because they are big things and you can't really have five or six or seven of these things and so your child has definitely got to be playing with that for it to justify it space in your home.

Ingrid  10:03  
Dolls and action figures was also a category that we've seen many, many times.

Lesley  10:09  
You're absolutely right another kind of baby category with all of those things, little bottles, little nappies, all those little things, you might have $10 First for your child. But there's also all the other paraphernalia that comes with it as well. So you might have to subcategorized dolls into dolls stuff as well. Only you know, whether your child is a child that loves to play with dolls or not. Some people might have one doll, some people might have 15 dolls, and it very much depends.

Ingrid  10:35  
Same with animals, I hardly have any animals in my house. But I know clients who have got a whole dinosaur collection with every dinosaur ever known to men in plastic, or to have got all the farm animals for all the zoo animals. And they love setting up a zoo or a farm with all the animals around and learning and teaching all the names that way, you know, animals can be a whole different sub category and even being sub categorised within that. And then you've got musical instruments Miracast, tambourine, Slidell, pianos, everything that makes a lot of noise. This can

Lesley  11:13  
go musical instruments definitely play a part right from birth, don't they as well. So there's going to be a musical instrument right from when they're first born with those things as well. So obviously, this is going to ebb and flow very much depending on the age of your child. But a lot of these things will stick around for years and years, because you'll have more than one child and they'll you know, you'd see you might have some toys for baby and some child for a toddler and an older one, and so on. So it's, it does definitely ebb and flow and the categorization needs to change depending on your child.

Ingrid  11:42  
I know I remember one toy really, really clearly that a friend gave to me was a little plastic piano. And oh boy, it makes so much noise and oh, boy, I really wanted to leave my house but the kids loved it. So for years, this little plastic piatto terrorised my house, and I would couldn't be happy when I finally declutter it, but it's one of the things I really remember most and the kids absolutely loved. So thank you for giving that to me because we really kids love to it's then my one of my favourite categories is of course, Lego. But also things like Playmobil. Duplo, mega blocks, kind of all that kind of building. My advice, listeners will be Lego or play mobiel never both.

Lesley  12:29  
But again, that's where other people come into play. And so you might say we're gonna be a Lego family, or a planet B or family and other people might have different ideas. And so it's very hard as well. I mean, I definitely think like your you know, was saying about a category here are some Lego Playmobil Duplo mega blocks, but obviously, you definitely need to subcategorize within those.

Ingrid  12:49  
Yeah, I agree with you, Lesley. Of course, we we've always been a Lego family. So we've stuck with Lego. And I've we've always been very clear to anybody who wanted to give gifts to us or asks us like, what would you like to have? Were Lego family. We're not a Playmobil family. Because I think it was that way when I was growing up. I know other families who love Playmobil. But when you mix the two together, it's so difficult to figure out what is what and I've worked with family who have both and oh boy boy, then the subcategorize and gets into a whole different level. Let's move on, we've got a couple of more categories to go Lesley, we've got those houses, things like little people, Sylvanian families, so the houses with all the little either animals or little doors that you can put in see if you can put that together as well, because then it actually makes it really nice for the children to play with it. If it's if they kind of have all the little fingers and little things that go with it. They can actually play with with the doors house itself. Next one is what I see is train sets, wooden blocks. I'm not talking about the fancy fancy trains that you can people have in their loft or anything but just a wooden train sets that everybody just loves to give the children I think, you know, because they love playing with trains and all the wooden blocks evolved little houses you can build. So if you have really mean like vehicles, of course, vehicles and garages, the helicopters and all of those kinds of things, fire trucks, and it's it's just actually is quite crazy how many stuff there is, isn't it? Lesley?

Lesley  14:24  
Yeah. Because we know you and I both know, so you said why do I not like doing them? There's your answer. Love categories. You know, we've been categories here. We already know by going through it that we've probably got at least two or three subcategories within this. Yeah. And that's not everybody has got a space in their house, where they can sub categorise effectively into 30 or 40 categories. And that's the problem that we've got some great storage out there that we're going to talk about in another podcast, but it is hard work and it's also hard to keep them all together. You know this is a full time job to keep your Sylvanian families together. fairplay to all those parents out there, they've got meticulous Sylvanian families and Bria will perfectly put together. I salute you.

Ingrid  15:08  
I know we haven't even talked about all the plastic tattoo that kids get when they go to McDonald's. And when they buy magazines, that's the category we'll left out because that's the category, the horror category, the box with all the plastic tabs, I'm like, just throw it away, they won't remember. Right? Three more categories, soft toys is definitely a separate category, tech gadgets and computer items. And then lastly, the cards. That's the whole hype from the last kind of five, six years. It wasn't really big when when my kids were a little bit littler.

Lesley  15:41  
Yeah, there was definitely football cars and Top Trumps and things like that went big. And so it's so just switched up, hasn't it a little bit? Yes, definitely card and then again, so categories of cards within cards and so on. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, I'm just gonna go to sleep. Now because of me even just thinking about a tiny room. There's one more thing I wanted to say really about categories, which is by brand. And so what I've seen quite a lot of if you've got a child that absolutely loves, for example, Peppa Pig, they'll put all their Peppa Pig together as one category. So there's also that as an option, categorising a little bit by brand, and you will know whether your child is into something enough that there it needs its own category.

Ingrid  16:20  
Good, good point, very well made. So lots and lots of categories questions to ask yourself. But now let's just move into decluttering. Because we've categorised it. We've already identified a few bits that are broken and are no more use to anybody. But then then what? What kind of decluttering questions? Do we need to ask ourselves, Lesley? Yeah, so we're overwhelmed at

Lesley  16:44  
this point, aren't we? This is the problem with play rooms, it's an overwhelming space. With thoughts about the categories, you and I both find it overwhelming just thinking about those categories. And so it's quite the job, isn't it to declutter toys. First things first, what you need to do is you need to determine whether or not your children are of an age where you can make decisions for them, I get asked this all the time from a client's Does my child need to be here. And it's a tough one. Because as a parent, you make lots of decisions for your children already, don't you important decisions, probably more important decisions than what toy they're going to play with that day. But equally, you know, the fallout that might incur if you get rid of something that they absolutely love. But what I say to most of my clients that I'm working with is, you know, if that is a very, very special tie, you will have seen your child playing with them, and you'll know how special and sentimental it is to them. So it's a rarity for children to have a problem with what their parents have done. And what I see more often than not, is that the child is delighted more by the space, and doesn't think about what they've lost. And the process is, trust me will be very, very different if you're doing it on your own, or you're doing it with a child.

Ingrid  18:00  
And to add to that, what also might be helpful is if you've decided to do all the decluttering. And you know that completely fully written.to dot books can be recycled, that might not be a problem, they can go into the recycling. But if you found a couple of items, maybe five or 10, again, you're unsure of is to keep those to the side and go look at the space. This is what we've decluttered. But I found a couple of bits, I wasn't sure that I want to run past you before we did make a decision on them. That might be really helpful as well, especially if the kids are a little bit older. Yeah, and

Lesley  18:37  
I think it's an important part point to get them involved in the decision making process. You know, my, if I'm gonna have to go out here and say, you know, if your child's on, I'm not going to put an age on it, because every child is different, but around the kind of eight or nine mark, definitely under that age, you should be able to make decisions for them. But it does no harm then to give them an option of four or five things that they can make a decision decision on to understand what that process feels like.

Ingrid  19:04  
Yeah, and I think you can then also start to instil those good habits, that they learn to make decisions as well. And that you have to involve them into the decision making process, and maybe not everything, but that you've actually said, okay, these books are all full, and they're all on this tour is broken, and this one was dirty, and this is incomplete or have finished. But these were the ones I wanted to run past you just to make sure that I've made the right decision. And then I think that's really nice for child to be included and kind of go, No mommy, that's fine or No, daddy, that's fine. I'm happy to let that go because I don't play with it anymore. But of course, if you involve them in the decision, make sure you then also respect their answer. I think it's really

Lesley  19:45  
important for them to understand the process what's been going on, because if they don't, you know, it might then manifest itself later into well, my parents threw all my stuff away. And then we see hoarding behaviours that ensue because the parents were to run to call. So that's where I go back to the point that I made at the beginning, which is you know, your own child. And you know what might happen if you do that for them when they are not ready or able or comfortable with that. And so there's no right or wrong age to do that. For ease for speed, for efficiency for effectiveness, try and do it without your child. But know what the repercussions of that are going to be if your child wouldn't be ready for that. And only you know that as a parent, it's a tough one, isn't it really, because while you're decluttering, you need to gather together things that you're not sure about. And the ones that would fall into this category are things that are incomplete, like puzzles and jigsaws, and things like that. So if you're not sure whether something's incomplete, then you're going to have to put it to one side together, and then gather the pieces as you find them, put them into the box, and then check them later. Even if you know it's gonna go. It's important to make sure that it's complete before you do that. Otherwise, it can be read for the most part that can be recycled. And so, you know, think about that as well. So sometimes you're gathering things together, aren't you knowing that something can be decluttered? But making sure that it's complete? before it goes?

Ingrid  21:09  
Yes, yes, oh, gosh, many times, I've helped my clients with categories. And then once we really thought, while we've actually gone through all the little bits and bobs, and this puzzle should not be complete, I would say to my clients, make the puzzle with your child. And if you then realise that the puzzle is indeed incomplete recycle it. Or if you find out that didn't enjoy it at all it can maybe go to be if it's completed can go to a charity shop. But that's not something unless maybe it's a puzzle of 10 pieces, you can check there and then if it's complete, but if you're looking at the puzzle of 100 pieces, that's not something you want to do there. And then if you're still categorising, and decluttering,

Lesley  21:47  
you know, as we talk about decluttering, as a whole, a lot of the decisions are reasonably straightforward, which are, are they broken? Are they age appropriate? But then a lot of the decluttering of toys goes a little bit deeper, doesn't it? Do we feel guilty about getting rid of stuff, even though the home is completely overwhelmed? Do we worry about what they're going to say when they find out that something's gone? Sometimes we do have to make quite hard decisions when we're decluttering toy rooms as parents, because the child may not they're not old enough to understand how to balance that open the same way that we are. Sometimes as well. We hold on to things for sentimental reasons as parents, and we need to understand where is it our sentiment compared to their sentiment? are we holding on to things because they're special to us, and not necessarily to them? There's things like that there's a lot of that toys have got a lot of emotion wrapped up in them, because it's the formative years of our children. And so this is not an easy category for a lot of people to declutter. But for others, it's very straightforward because it's a practical decluttering job,

Ingrid  22:48  
because the toys evoke the memories and emotions connected to the children from when they were young. Maybe your kids are older now and you suddenly come across some items that you completely forgot you had in your cupboards and ego kind of almost takes you back to that time.

Lesley  23:03  
Yeah, it's we don't often advocate decluttering. For other people, we always say you should never ever make decisions for other people. When it's a child, we kind of have to because the process of going through a whole playroom A would be way too overwhelming for a child to go through. They've not got the staying power to do that. And too hard for them, because they are probably going to set the have a feeling of loss because they've not rationalised that, because they're not old enough to do that. So do some kids are absolutely fine. Some kids are actually because sometimes parents have asked me to work with a child. And that's hard as well, because the relationship that I've got with a child as a professional organiser is different to that, obviously to the relationship with the parents. And so sometimes a child will make a decision wanting to please. And that might not be the right decision for them. It might not be a decision that they're comfortable with, but they think it's a decision that they ought to make. And that's the same with the parents as well. I think overall, the most important thing to bear in mind is that you can do whatever you want with toys, as long as your space is not overwhelmed. And that's where you need to make the decision. If you've got space for the toys, you're not finding it overwhelming the family. Well categorise organise the store, your kids are happy, they can play with what they want to play with most of them. Don't worry about it. But if you're finding your heart sink in, as soon as you come into the room, because you're completely overwhelmed with that plastic invasion, it's time to take some action, and that action is probably going to have to be quite a hard one to get through.

Ingrid  24:31  
Can I give one last top tip before we wrap up this episode? You may if my suggestion as well would be if you are categorising and decluttering. You will without a shadow of a doubt find lots of little random bits and bobs that you're not sure yet what they belong to because you haven't for example, found the board game yet or found the puzzle yet or found the books where the Lego is going to go into yet. So have a little too up or tray or shoe box or crate or something where you can kind of put all those little bits and bobs in that as soon as you the categories are starting to get become clearer, then you can put but don't have all the little bits and bobs lying everywhere. It's better to even to put them on tray or something. And then you go up. There's the puzzle where that little piece code goes with. Now I can put it in the right box, but don't let it loose everywhere because then you will just stay in chaos. So that's my top tip to finish this categorising and decluttering toys Episode Oh my gosh, it's a bit application it

Lesley  25:39  
is I'm exhausted just talking about

Ingrid  25:42  
I know so we're gonna wrap up listeners, Lesley, anything else from you? Or is this it's for us? No, I think we're good.

Lesley  25:49  
We've we've talked about decluttering and categorising, it's important to know that sometimes depending on your space, you might organise as you go, you might have appropriate storage. So actually, all of the those components of the decluttering cycle that we always talk about this cycle, you've got to go from beginning to end sometimes the lines get muddied and the water gets muddied a little bit. And so it may be that you're organising as you go, it may be that you're using the storage that you've already got. And but we're trying to sort of break it down a little bit. So we know that actually you might be organising at this stage as well, but we're gonna talk specifically next week, aren't we about organising and storage?

Ingrid  26:24  
Right, so listeners today was all about categorising and decluttering. And next week, we will conclude this three part series and we're going to talk about organising storage and donating toys. So we hope this has been really really helpful for you into breaking this massive toy room down into small manageable chunks, and that the categorising will help you in your decluttering or the other way around. We really appreciate you listening and we hope you are inspired to take action. And if you've enjoyed this podcast don't forget to leave a review for us. We love reading how you feel about the show. You can also email us via support at declutter home.com and tell us how you feel about the show. If you'd like to get more tips and advice, please follow us on social media. We are on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, as at declutter hub, and we've got a Facebook group called the declutter hub community and we'd love to see you there. Take a look at members dot declutter hub.com To find more about our membership. If you don't want to miss the next weekly episodes, subscribe to the declutter hub podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and iHeartRadio. And it will pop into your net notifications each Friday. See you next time.

Outro  27:48  
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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