I’ve had an epiphany!

[SoyDora]

Now I know my children have too much ‘stuff’ and don’t need any more, this is not news. However we’ve just had a bedroom shift around and I’ve finally truly realised that they don’t need any more stuff. At all.
I’ve looked around at all the stuff I’m bagging up to send to the charity shop and realised how little of it was actually needed. Clothes still with labels in or worn once, toys barely played with. And I generally consider myself a sensible consumer (I don’t go at all overboard at Christmas and birthdays for example).
Anyone else come to this realisation? How to stem the tide? Of course I know what I need to do... just stop buying stuff. But how to go about reducing the amount coming in from other people, without being rude?
For example, it was DD2’s birthday recently. She had a fairly small party (10 friends). But she received as gifts from her friends 3 backpacks, 2 lunchboxes, 2 jewellery making kits and 3 other craft kits. Not to mention all the stuff bought by grandparents, family friends, aunties etc. We’re drowning!
Any advice?

Could you ask people like in-laws etc to get gifts such as “adopting an animal at the zoo” or putting money in an account for her to have when she’s 18? Or if there’s something big she needs like a bike or riding lessons you could ask them to contribute and just explain you are trying to cut down on the amount of stuff she gets for a while.

I used to just let my kids put it away in their cupboards and then a few months later we’d have a clearout and I’d send the stuff to charity shops or put it into school tombola stalls. Look at your own spending first though - cut down on the clothing maybe?

Yes I definitely need to cut down on clothing spend, this is my weak spot.
Experience type gifts are a good idea.
The problem with asking for money towards big ticket items is that the in-laws in particular tend to buy these as well as loads of smaller gifts for birthdays/Christmas. We’re obviously very grateful to them (both DD’s needed new bikes recently and they bought them as an ad-hoc gift), but they somehow feel it’s not ‘enough’ and want them to have additional stuff to open. I think this stems from the fact that they live abroad and don’t see the grandchildren as much as they’d like so over compensate with ‘stuff’. I think next time they’re over we’ll just explain that we have far too much as it is and the girls would be just as happy with a trip out for a milkshake or something when they’re visiting!

A lot of the clothing with labels in is also from MIL, as she tend to buy things without considering the seasons. This is fine for the older DC as things fit them for longer, but for example for the baby she bought a load of winter clothes that started to fit him around May/June. I’ll have a chat to her about it as I obviously don’t want her wasting her money.