We have reached that time of year again, imminently our precious offspring believe a fat, beardy bloke in a red onesie is going to break into our Houses leaves toys behind and breaks every rule we have ever told them about not taking gifts from strangers!
I don’t know about anyone else but every toy that enters my home adds to a mountain of assorted chaos, that appears to be impossible to cull and toys seem to sneak in from everywhere!* There is the expected arrivals birthdays and Christmas (where parents and possibly grandparents are the main contributors) and you can mentally prepare yourself for this. Then there is the other stuff, hand me downs, party favours, happy meal toys, ‘prizes’ that they won in some classroom competition that you and every other parent you speak to has zero knowledge of. Unfortunately this single use plastic nightmare does not just curse my door though, it curses the door of every parent out there. So I thought I would share with you the adventure I had back in November doing a pre-Christmas toy purge. (obviously this adventure can be undertaken at any time and I will probably be doing it all over again in the new year weeding out all the things that I missed or have fallen apart since or have been updated by Santa)
So as a Mumma who has long strived for (and is still striving for) a house less like the before pictures on an episode of hoarders and more like something occupied by human beings I have scoured Pinterest for the perfect decluttering and organising plan, so before I began my toy purge I did it all over again and found the same list of posts by overly perky super organised people who promise this will be the last decluttering plan you will ever need, they call it:
- The Kon Mari Method: Only keep things that are useful, beautiful, or bring you joy.
- Swedish Death cleaning: Yes this is actually a thing! But it’s not as morbid as it sounds its aimed at the older generation and focusses on removing things from your life that hold no purpose to you and that your loved ones will eventually have to throw into a skip when they are already grieving, it also encourages giving that heirloom (vase, painting, necklace) etc to your loved one now so you can see them enjoy it if currently in your home its only purpose is to catch dust.
- Reverse Decluttering: This one is extreme in my book, you pack absolutely everything into boxes, seal and label them with the contents, you then only remove things as you need them and after a predetermined amount of time you then get rid of the rest as you don’t need it. I cannot imagine using a decluttering plan that would involve emptying cardboard boxes everywhere when you realise half way through cooking dinner that you need the egg whisk!
- The 4 box method: 4 boxes, keep, bin, recycle, sell/donate, definitely the ‘go to’ method
- The half it method: I like this method it doesn’t have the all or nothing mentality of methods like the Kon Mari, it encourages you not to get rid of everything, for example Daniel has a small forest of books, but rather than this method screaming “get rid of every book he doesn’t read at least once a week” it gently nudges you saying “Just get rid of some of them, will he really be missing out if you get rid of 10% of them or even 50%” so the result is you have less books and that’s a win.
- The one touch method: this is the fast declutter method, you touch it once and done, keep? put it away, bin? straight in the rubbish. It’s fast paced and the theory is the more you touch something the more value your brain adds to it so by only touching it once you aren’t creating false feelings for the item.
So after reading all of these pages looking for Inspiration (that is pretty much the reason I reread them every time it gives me decluttering mojo at the promise of an organised home) I then revert to the Lili mish-mash decluttering method which I will share with you now.
- Remove child(ren) from proceedings: I am all for encouraging small people to give away and bin unwanted things, but to my 5 years old a full toy purge would be the utter betrayal as he rediscovers all his ‘favourite’ things that I want to get rid of. With older kids I encourage involving them but only to within the boundaries of your patience.
- Make a coffee and find something mindless to watch on Netflix. for your own sake do not watch anything you need to focus on, you will either miss the whole series and have no idea what’s going on or get distracted and watch an entire episode whilst holding the same snapped in half lightsabre.
- Gather supplies: Boxes, bin liners, cleaning supplies, pen and paper (this may seem odd, but if you plan to sell anything or put it on facebay for free write a list of these items and do it in one go afterwards, that way you don’t get caught up in mindless scrolling and waste three hours of your day)
- Get everything together in one place, toys, games, legos, books, everything! This way you will see what you have. Once you have lifted your jaw off the floor in shock move on to step 5.
- Get rid of the ‘big wins’ straight away – things that you 100% know are going, before I even started I knew the Hotwheels track was going, D loved his cars and play matt – The Hotwheels repeatedly got thrown around the room and bits broke off it for me to stand on. for me everything that was going went straight into the back of my car – that way things could not find their way out of the boxes and back onto the house.
- Split the remaining toy mountain into ‘like groups’ so all the legos, all the books, all the jigsaws.
- Go through each pile, work fast, bin the crap, box up the sell/donate stuff put the keep stuff into a laundry basket or similar for safe keeping. if you aren’t sure on something have a temporary maybe pile. Once you have gone through the rest of the pile go back to the maybe pile and make a slightly more informed decision, depending how much else you’ve kept.
- Once you have gone through all your piles it is time to rehome everything, one thing it took me a while to realise (because I’m special like that) is that you don’t have to put it back in the same place! First put away the ‘big stuff’ think toy kitchen, box of trains, dolls house or anything else that will take up large amounts of prime floor/ shelf real estate. Once that is in place move on to everything else, I love bins and baskets for corralling small toys, craft supplies and anything that is non stackable. There is a size that even boxed toys look like a cluttered mess when stacked up and the whole stack tumbles over like Jenga every time your child tries to get one thing off the shelf.
- With the toys away it is time to remove all evidence of your purge, rubbish in the bin, immediately post anything you are trying to sell online and give it a time limit if it hasn’t sold in that time frame either donate it or bin it. get anything you are donating out of the house immediately, I moved everything to the boot of my car and my lovely mum then took the stuff from my car to transport it to the charity shop for me.
- Celebrate your decluttering victory!
So there is my step by step toy purging plan, it’s not perfect but it works. I will also add that if you are worried about your child stepping back into your house sensing that you have binned the broken lightsabre and 12 piece jigsaw with 5 missing pieces – don’t be. When D came home there was no crying, no melt down, no how can you do this to me! He didn’t even notice and I can say with 99% certainty that your small people wont either!
Stay safe my loves! ❤️
Namaste 🙏
Li ❤️
*I want to make it very clear that I am in no way ungrateful to the lovely friends and family that give Daniel gifts, I am incredibly thankful that he has wonderful people who love him so much, but my house is not big enough for the amount of ‘stuff’ my child owns!
Upson Family Values 