My kids have too much stuff!!! Help!

[~Kim~]

I have taken all soft toys into a bag in the shed. I figured if no-one asked about them in 12 months they'd go, but I reckon they've been there at least 2years lol. Out of sight out of mind
My kids have al their toys in OSS Ikea drawer/tub thingos. Each type has its own cars/ponies/lalaloopsies etc. each child also has a small random tub where random () stuff goes.
Dd2has a basket for her larger stuff out in the family room. It's getting culled soon.
I tried rotating tubs but it didn't really work for us, so I just got rid of the excess that wasn't played with. We have a great Buy, Swap, Sell local page. I gave up on eBay a long time ago.

When gifts are due (birthdays etc) I try to buy extensions of what we have. Because we live so far away from out families, they usually send money, and my mum was as fussy as me, so she knows how it works.

Lego however is my biggest 'problem'. I have it in every room. Dd2s duplo is stored in a large coffee table drawer. Dd1s friends stuff is stored in a rolling box under her bed. My old stuff is in a large tub and kept separate from DS' new stuff.

I'm not terribly sentimental I don't think. I've kept small but precious stuff in a single box each. My mum just moved out of our house of 30 years and had kept all this 'stuff', for us, but none of us really had any attachment to it after all these years. It was more for her.

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

I also do rotating boxes. At the moment we have the Kung Zhu hamsters, lego and scalectrix out (ie in the hidey behind the sofa, so within easy reach). Maybe next time we'll have the nanobugs or the railway or the cars... who knows!

We have a lot of lego, so we'll swap around various sets of lego.

I also chuck out a lot. I'll keep the "good" stuff (the duplo, brio, baby play mat, wooden activity cube... - well, we'll have grandchildren some day) and get rid of the cheap plastic stuff to a charity shop. Or the bin, if it's broken. How sentimental can you get over a toy? Yes, a favourite soft toy or some expensive bits of lego/brio, or the odd toy from a now-deceased relative, but the most sentiment I have is over the big items I wanted as a child that I buy for Liebs (the lego and the two-story shed we're getting this summer so Liebs can have an outdoor sleepover!).

Can I ask why the toy is sentimental? Thinking about this may well help you decide if it does need to go or not.

[~Hestia~]

I have two big storage units that we had made specifically for the big blue ikea tubs. It's amazing how much can fit in there! The tubs have specific toys in them, for instance 3 are used for the train stuff, 1 has dress ups etc. i was never very good at rotating stuff so needed something to contain everything! I am good at donating things the boys have moved on from, I do keep some things for the grandchildren too!

[HotI]

when I was a kid, I had a chain hanging from the roof with clips to hang stuffed toys from. I think I am going ti look around for them and get one each for the kids. I am trying to create spaces for toys, and go with things have to fit here, or they go out.

[Santosha]

I just did a huge cull. About 1/3 of all their toys are gone including reducing collections (200ish bits of plates, cups and play food to about 50, 19384829 wooden blocks to a small tub of the good stuff, halved the matchbox car collection). Anything that they haven't played with in 6 months is gone. Anything that gets a cursory play and then dumped on the floor is gone. I have pretty much stripped it back to what I consider to be the basics: blocks, trains, cars, toy animals, dolls and clothes, play kitchen, a few favourite stuffed toys and the good quality puzzles. You know what? They didn't notice! Apart from being delighted that I set up the play kitchen in a way that's more user friendly and has had them playing 'cafe' for two weeks solid. They have not asked for one missing thing. And they're actually focused and more organised in their play because they're not wading through stuff and dealing with the distraction of me telling them to pick up.

I planned ahead, listed what I was culling and put ads on freecycle, for things to be picked up on a day that they were away. Anything that didn't go, I took to Vinnies.

I am SO GLAD I did this. No regrets at all, even if some gifts or things I had memories around went in the process. I don't miss any of it and feel so much better about the space we have and the effect it's had on both myself and the kids. Get rid of it Hun. Kids have grown and thrived just fine on the strength of a single rag doll and trees to climb. Your kids will do just fine without the majority of their toys.
xo