How many toys do your kids have?

[badg3r]

I made the mistake of beginning to sort out the kids' toys. I thought our flat was quite tidy, when it's all put away you can't really see any toys lying around. I emptied all the toys into a pile. OMG. It was like a mountain of plastic and metal and wood. The kids thought it was amazing. The four year old made a pile of their favourite things which were mostly broken pieces of kinder egg toys and a couple of thirty year old toy cars. The thought of more stuff crossing the threshold every Christmas ans birthday fills me with dread. Am I alone? What is normal?!

Too many. 100s of LOL,s plus the big OMG ones. The massive doll house plus plane and camper. Barbie. Polly pockets. Lego. She hardly plays with anything.

11 year old has no just the schleich dragons and scary looking animals.

We have a play room and I rotate the toys every 2 -4 weeks especially books and puzzles.

I would throw away broken pieces of kinder egg toys, donate toys they have outgrown but mine doesn't have much of an opinion yet (2 & 4 months).

I throw out the kinder egg / McDonald's / £1 eggs you get in the machines

More than they need. Enough that I'm planning on saying "no toys" when relatives ask what to buy at birthday/xmas.

This is the reason we have a playroom. I try not to go in there very often 😂😂
Last week my sister tried to offload all her Grandchildren's crap onto me for dd. Luckily dd was at school and didn't see me telling her THANKS BUT NO THANKS.

I try to say no toys too, or suggest a couple of things that I know they'll like. I think the stuff we have is 95% gifts from other people. People are so kind with kids but it makes me really sad in a way that there's this brainwashing that if you love someone you have to buy them loads of stuff. And then all these things sitting here in the attic when others have nothing.

Loads. I do a regular Sweep of all the tat (kinder eggs I'm looking at you) and outgrown and chuck/charity shop them. I dont buy kinder eggs or anything like it any more.

DS1 got a big lego set for his birthday and not much else from me. He got a day out from one GP. Plenty of other presents from other family members

@ParkheadParadise haha yes toys and clothes! When my first was tiny I thought people were being really kind but I have seen the other side now, I'm desperate for people to accept toys ans clothes from us but nobody ever wants them 😂 thank goodness for the charity shops!

too many and they are hardly ever played with all I hear is how 'bored' they are.

Omg yes, the "I'm bored". I swear mine would sit and watch tv all day if it wasn't for the fact the the remotes often go "missing".

We have way too many. Hardly any get played with. I’m desperate to do a big clear out, definitely need to before Christmas. My parents and in laws always have an amount of money that they want to spend and I have to come up with ideas for then to that amount. It’s generous of them but makes for lots of untouched toys. I’ve started giving them one toy idea then telling them to make up the rest of the amount with vouchers for clothes when they need them.

I often grumble that I have spent FAR more time picking toys up from the floor than I ever spend playing with my children. Ours are also nearly all gifts. There was a period when the Grandparents would bring mew toys every week plus mountains for Xmas and birthdays plus all the stuff that other people gave plus the hand me downs from cousins and friends’ kids. The slightly annoying thing is also that my dc do play with all of it and they always notice when I get rid of stuff but I guess at least it’s used. I am so tired of picking stuff up off the floor. I need to get better at making them clear up after themselves

I do think it’s ‘normal’ for a 21st century western family to have this much stuff but in the context of human history it’s not normal or sustainable or helpful

A playroom full of everything she could ever need, role play, millions of books, cars, blocks, sensory, Peppa people, paw patrol, those linkimals things, ball pit, dress up, kitchen area…far too much! To be fair, she does play with most things and it has really helped her development she’s advanced for her age

Ohhh yes, I feel you this is why we are extending !

As soon as he starts school in sept, I'm definitely having a sort out and of the shed, and under the stairs and the loft and the little storage boxes tucked away all over the house

He hardly plays within any of it, I could re wrap most of it and give it to him for Christmas, I doubt he would notice !!

I have 3 kids and about 300 million toys. They’re everywhere!!!! I’m always trying to get rid of some but they must breed when we’re not home!

I think toy rotation is your friend. When DS was little I had a 2x4 kallax on it's side for him. I put 1 or 2 toys on each shelf and books across the top between book ends. I changed the contents once a week or so- the rest was stored in plastic crates in the garage.

We don't have a ridiculous quantity. One of those 8 cube kallax units, one trofast (mainly playmobil in there), a dressing up box and a couple of bigger items which don't fit in the drawers.

We don't really buy tiny plastic junk like kinder egg toys, so everything is decent quality and can be sold or donated when they're finished with it.

We do a big donation of toys to a local charity in December. They take toys to local kids who wouldn't otherwise have Christmas presents. So anything that they don't play with much or have grown out of, gets donated.

What we do have too many of is books 🤦‍♀️

Agree with the idea of toy rotation.
Or setting up some toys they haven't played with recently, they will probably suddenly rediscover them

We have far far too many...

10 Kallax boxes with dinosaur/craft books/Toot Toot toys/cars/}random crap/Paw Patrol Toys and Playmobil in.

2 Ikea laundry baskets full of soft toys, lots of dolls/babies/doll related crap.

Box of musical instruments/wooden train track/Go Jetters toys, cupboard of puzzles and games and lots of bookshelves.

In the office at the bottom of the garden are lots of Lego/Duplo and a few dolls/dragons/dinosaurs and bookshelves. (To VE fair lots of the Lego is DH's).

I find it very very hard to get rid of stuff 'just on case' and have children from 10 -2 so most of it gets played with at some point. We do have far far too much though.

Well this has obviously been playing in my mind tonight because I went through the toy boxes this evening 😂 five hours it took. Sob. There is now an enormous suitcase of toys in the attic that I'll go through with the kids so that they can decide what to chuck and what to sell/donate. They are quite keen to donate and sell some which I good I guess. I get so grumpy about this though. All this wasted time and money for things we didn't even want/need. I am aware how bad this sounds but it's true... I spend so much time tidying up and sorting when I could be playing with the kids, and we didn't buy any of it really. Next step will be to tackle toy rotation!

ds 4 too many toys. I regularly throw out toys with missing pieces or broken ones.
We have some toys that are for his speech therapy and occupational therapy sessions so they are kept separately from his everyday toys

dd14 has hundreds of teddy bears she has collected over the years she refuses to get rid of them. he rooms likea teddy bear factory there everywhere.

Oh god when my 3 were all young we had so many toys. I don’t know how many’s too many though, probably if they don’t all have a home. We had adequate storage to keep things relatively tidy, obviously certain things couldn’t all be put ‘away’, toy kitchen, car garage, bulky things etc but we had lots of toy boxes and baskets to tidy things away in at the end of the evening and the bulky things all had ‘homes’ that were out of the way.
I think it’s too many when you’re tripping over them and they aren’t being played with as they’re just wallpaper, you know, seen but ignored.