I want to throw out at leat 70% of the toys and games in this house

[Twiglett]

they don't play with them

they have an entire room filled with them, plus 2 bedrooms plus spill over into living room

I think that 2 children should be able to survive with toys and books in

1 toy chest (it's big and deep)
1 set of shelves (it's big, made up of 16 x 33cm(sq) cubes) and has 4 drawers at the bottom)
1 arts and crafts chest (4 drawers, 2 deep, 2 slim)

I am not counting a huge doll's house and 2 huge horses that need floor space btw

how do I get rid of the rest of the feckin' crap

We threw out abou8t 80% of ours this morning- they had a playroom full of palstic toy buckets which they just constantly trashed, so we went to IKEA and ordered some storage and they got some very limited storgae each, anbnd the sofa bed is being delivered Tuesday. I don't care any moe, total disrepspect and it was a tip of broken toys. We threatened enough times, they lose. ho-hum

(its also going to be used as a safe space for ds2 when ds1 is on meltdown, as he needs his sleep but it cn be dangerous to put him to bed as ds1 will attack- so there is another motive there too)

Oh we had 3 piles

Keep (smallest)

Bin (by far the biggest)

School fayre

I had to clear their room for bunkbeds.

TWO full sized bin bags of toys removed (some being donated to the MN xmas thing, the rest freecycle)

ONE bin bag of broken/not worth keeping or giving away.

The result - they are playing in their room again. They are tidying before bed. They have space

They are happy, haven't really twigged that a load is missing (DS is too young to know), tis good

I banished them from the room when I did it - it would never have worked with "help"

I am soooo going to do this.

Question though, how do you deal with homemade "tat"?

Ds1 is a complete horder and he has piles of made models that he's brought home from school (mostly of the one plastic milk carton and 3 strips of tissue paper stuck to it). I try and remove bits and pieces when he's not there and chuck them, but it's hard going and not always successful.

I have hit on a good way to go through his paper art work though with him. I do a 2/3rds cull every now and then by picking out three things and say which one do you want to keep? He picks the best of the three, and the other two go in the "recycle" pile. Work through the lot then at the end he can swap anything out of the "recycle" pile for something in the "keep" pile until he's happy.

For some reason though, same method is just NOT working for the 3D model pile...

I have things the 6 year old has grown out of but the 2 year old will want. All you mums that got rid of theing, was it things that all the children had grown out of?

with a 4 year gap I would probably keep at most half as the younger one will get presents etc in the future. plus only do this if you have somewhere to store them in the meatime. TBH you can buy 2nd hand toys very cheaply so we get rid of stuff that is not really played with and have an attitude we can always buy it again 2nd hand if need be.

NAb a lot of it was grown out of yes, or Macdoanlds style 'tat' that they can sell 4 for 50p at teh school fete.

RD- we have loads fo those models too (being one of ds1's ASD obsessions for a while- yuck), he has an art box which si a bit bigger than a shoe box he ahs decorated to store things in- everything else has to go.

I am so crap at this

I look at things and think how much fun 'could' be had and how sweet things are and don't want to throw them away

there are groups of toys like Ben-10 characters and power rangers that they don't necessarily play with but would be unhappy if I got rid of

and all of a sudden a dinosaur will make it's way to a lego construction or 'contraption' and I think how can I choose which of the 50 or so plastic dinosaurs go

who fancies a swap .. I'll bring my hard-faced bitch face round to your house and do yours if you'll come and do mine?

oh and don't get me on art stuff .. we have a special 4-drawer for arts & crafts PLUS a deep pan drawer in the kitchen PLUS an easel in the bedroom PLUS paper and paints and glues and glitters in different kits

how do I get rid of creative stuff? surely that's for larnin' (you know like book-larnin')

I do this regularly - every couple of months I go through each toy box (we have 2 small toy boxes downstairs - although these are going to go soon, fingers crossed - and then each ds has a bookcase or shelves in his room with 2 - 3 toy boxes) and divide out into rubbish (small plastic trash) and charity shop (large plastic trash). Wish I could be organised enough to e-bay things, but it's easier to take them to the charity shop.

All homemade things get chucked after a week or two or we'd be snowed under with stuff from school and pre-school. The odd work of art goes on the walls but that's about it.

sounds heartless but helps keep a small house fairly tidy and most rooms downstairs have still got a bit of a grown up feel!

I have the same problem. And we are moving back to Italy in less than 3 weeks. I should be throwing away stuff - recycle- bring to charities. ANd I can't. And they always seems to "rediscover" a certain toys, or employ it in a different way. ANd I have one drawer full of their artwork. the artwork that didn't make it on the walls, that is. I'm overwhelmed. help.

Just put your hard-faced head on and do it! Do it when they've gone to bed - get a couple of bin bags out and go for it - it's quite addictive...

And the best thing is when the toy boxes are half empty, they discover what's been at the bottom of them for ages and start playing with all those things - and I really like seeing them enjoying stuff they haven't actually been able to reach for months.

I feel the same way, but when it comes to the actual deed, I chicken out.

Maybe a good way to approach chucking things out is to do something similar to Flylady's flings - ie pick a number of things to get rid of and don't stop until you do.

car boot full went to the School Xmas fair last week, and I've done another 3 carrier bags this morning. I co-opt the boys help to put all the bits together, so the toys are worth having, but when they get bored I just carry on and bin the tat, and clean up the rest for the next fete/fair. I cant believe how often I do this, and still we are overflowing.

I have got them a bit more enthused to help this time, as its going to their school fete, so they're quite keen to create a big pile.

And I agree, its lovely when they play with stuff they've forgotten that rises to the top of the pile when the rubbish is cleared out. But I have to steel myself to get rid of the cute baby stuff, to see it replaced with monsters etc

the baby stuff! I find it difficult to get rid of that. I always think it can be useful again . who am I kidding?

What about work books? Some of them have been filled in. Do I keep in the box or get rid?

I told my almost 3 year old that we had to put old toys away so that santa could bring new ones and she was quite fine with that and just chose a few things that she really wanted to keep. Worked a treat =)

DD1 has parted with some of her things to give to DD2 for her birthday so although I am not getting rid I am preventing getting more. Iykwim.

Does anyone need any spare counters for Connect Four? The lid haslong gone and the base is broken but the counters are all there.

I have been doing this this afternoon
cripes it's been dull

i have moved the kids toys to the hallway (big back hall) and each night i am going through it. i have two bags, one for rubbish and one for charity shop,. each night i fill both bags! hopefully tonight (night 4) will be the last night.

we are doing a massice decluttering stage atm. in the new year we will be tackling the loft.

I was just strong, took out anything they haven't played with in ages, or things like barbies that are occasionally touched I kept about 5 of (and about 8 outfits) so there were enough for several girls to sit and play with together.

Anything I knew was precious (Heatblast who is rarely touched but much loved) I kept.

Made tat - depends on if I could remember when it was made and what it was.

Workbooks are all half done here

Inspired by this thread I have:

• Thrown away 4 cheap tat type things.
• Taken away a BeddyBear that is never used (with DD1s permission )
• Taken away a rabbit handbag that is never used (also with DD1s permission and a suggestion that she gives it to her friend!)
• Moved a box of megabloks from the playroom to DD1s bedroom
• Given 3 of DD1s books to DD2 (again with DD1s permission)

Interstingly when I wanted to talk about the box of Duplo that is never used DD1 put her fingers in her ears and said "I can't hear you" so i took the hint

every few months i bring a big black bag full of ds,s toys to the charity shop and he never misses them,never get rid of anything sentimental or that would be missed only yesterday i filled a shopping bag with toys i found in my car while cleaning it and when i gave it to ds [2 years 3 months] he thought they were all new...spoilt???

A couple of years ago we sold our house and put everything into storage while we went travelling. We had a house full of kids' tat, much of it jumbled up. My 7 year old and i sent dh off with 5 year old and got sorting. The best and quickest way we found was to tip every random thing into plastic containers, set the timer for 10 mins then go through one container. we had boxes for stuff to keep (e.g. a railway box, a dolls box), boxes for things to sell and a box for things to bin. When the timer went off we binned whatever was left. We had a fun time and got rid of loads, including stuff i would not have dared chuck by myself.