by Mama Fox
It's time again for my pre-Christmas toy purge. I'm doing it a tiny bit earlier this year because my youngest's birthday is in November. Normally in November I go through ALL the toys and trash broken ones and donate anything they haven't played with in a while. Some things I pack away to pull out later. I try to get the boys into the action, explaining that toys they don't want can be given to little boys and girls that don't have any toys at all. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but at least I'm trying.
Between my 3 boys, there's a lot of toys. Not really an overwhelming amount but enough to make a small mountain in their room if everything gets piled up... and it often does. They are masters at the messing up. They pull toys out and scatter them like confetti. We've been working on "if you pull something out, put it away before getting something else" but they are kids.
I'd be a broken record if we really tried to follow that. I just add in a few reminders and model the behavior myself.
I was telling a friend of mine today, if I got rid of all their toys except their legos they would be perfectly fine. Haha! Their legos (and dulpos and quatros)are, by far, the most played with toy. They build rockets, tornadoes, volcanoes, cars, aliens and people, pirate ships... can you tell they are boys?
They even sleep with their blocks sometimes. The second favorite is their stack of puzzles. They seriously have about 35 puzzles. Fox2 especially could sit for hours just putting together puzzles, over and over again. Fox3 is starting to be the same way. He loves the animal peg puzzle.
What are your kids' favorite toys? Do you ever go through their toy pile and "purge" the ones that aren't getting played with?
Comments (10)
Mine is too young to purge toys (she's 5 months), but I taught early childhood for 8 years and I did that every single year in my room. There were some toys that were neglected year after year...why waste the space? There were some (all the blocks!) that were always favorites no matter what class I had, so I ended up investing in more to go around.
When purchasing new gifts, we also opt for things that everyone can enjoy as a family, such as board games, puzzles, and family friendly videos, instead of all toys. I also give them "kid music". Other things, are activity packages, Crayola has so many options, that way they can "make something", and they can even give that something away when they are done with it if they want to. Either way, it is less toys cluttering up the house.
My twin girls are 15 months now, and I found out that I don't need to buy them toys. They like papers, any kind, nappkins, newspaper, boxes... If you give them a new toy, they will not play it after 15 minutes.
No favorite toys right now, but she LOVES books! She's even holding a book to sleep during her nap. I should go check on her now. haha..... Legos are great though because they can make whatever they want. If we let the kids play with the Legos all day everyday at the daycare that I taught at, they would gladly do it, and build all kinds of fantastic things too. I think they can be engineers when they grow up.
I did one purge before my daughter's birthday and I plan to do another one before Christmas. I tossed out some broken toys and stowed some toys away to be donated later. I'll be doing the same thing again soon.
I purge every 3-4 months or so. My 3 boys love to collect things and after awhile, it ends up just making a mess and they don't even remember what they have! We get rid of all the kid's meal toys then, too. Every now and again there will be one or two that they absolutely love and play with a lot, so we keep those. My daughter hasn't gotten to that point yet. She's 3 and the only girl, so it's a little different and harder to weed through the toys. She's still at the point where she plays with a lot of different things and doesn't have a longer attention span like my boys. They could and do play with legos ALL day long. A really good place to get legos is on Ebay! I can buy them by the pound or by piece (100, 200, 350, etc.) instead of in the set. I'd rather they use their imaginations and make up something rather than follow the directions for a certain thing. Not to mention the fact the sets are so expensive for the small amount of legos you get.
My 2 1/2 year old loves any train, mainly the "Take Along Thomas".
My boys haven't got into Legos yet. They are big into Thomas - wooden Thomas. Other favorites are Cars, Leap Pad, Thomas Duplo, and Lincoln Logs.
They need no toys! I've made the plea to the family to gift them with "experiences" rather than toys this Christmas. Take them out for mini-golf, a movie, or to the beach. They love it.
I could spend all day enthralled by legos...and i'm 21! i LOVE legos...only thing is, i don't have any :P but thats ok.
I'm working on purging my clothes...i have too many :P except instead of donating them, i'm selling them for cheap on craigslist. :P i need the money (to buy food) :P
i'm sure my mother goes thru my sibling's toys every year, most likely before garage sale season :)
I really need to go through all my 7 yr olds playstuff since we've only had a couple of yard sales since he was born.I'm ordering one of those toy organizers which hopefully will help and I'm thinking of dividing what we do keep into maybe 4 different sets so he doesn't have everything literally overflowing his boxes and maybe switching every 3 or 4 weeks.I have an older child too ,12 ,who is more into video games now than anything else but he does still like to play hot-wheel cars with his little bro and still keeps a collection of them ,boys love their cars, and a collection of beanie babies in a hanging thing I got for him in his room.