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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to get rid of the toys that really piss me off, even if DD still plays with them?

110 replies

Undercovamutha · 12/10/2009 17:23

E.g. Fuzzy Felt. It is the bane of my life. I always seem to have a bit of bloody fuzzy felt stuck to me, every corner of the house seems to be full of the damn stuff, and DD just seems to get it all out of the box, spread it round the main walkways and then go off to play with something else. Grrrr!

Same can be said of many other of DDs toys, which all seem to be minute, totally unsafe for nearly crawling DS, and surprisingly adhesive to clothes!!!!!

AIBU to just surreptitiously rid the house of them? Maybe DD won't even notice !

OP posts:
LimburgseVlaai · 13/10/2009 12:19

I do it all the time: put things that annoy me (and that DDs don't absolutely love) in the charity bag. Fuzzy felt went that way because it stank. So have toys with American voices, and Moon Sand.

If you think Playdoh is bad, you should try Moon Sand. It changes into one uniform sand colour within seconds of it opening, and then it gets EVERYWHERE. But EVERYWHERE . I still get angry thinking about that.

HowlingAtTheMoon · 13/10/2009 12:20

Moon Sand OMG I hate it!!!!!!!1

BalloonSlayer · 13/10/2009 12:30

I am worse than you, OP, I give away things DD has received for birthday presents, without recompense to DD.

I have given away:

  • about eight sets of "make your own jewellery" - essentially beads and piano wire for all your garrotting needs. Why can't they provide elastic FFS?
  • several "paint your own disney figurines/mini teaset/model nuclear power station" sets. In reality this means that DD either starts to paint, gets in a strop because it doesn't look as good as on the box and I have to do it, OR I wait until she is old enough to make a decent job of it and then she has outgrown Disney Princesses or whatever it was.
  • a glamourous Disney princess set she would have loved two years earlier but was now too old for and slightly insulted by. She would have played with it for ten seconds, had I encouraged her, so I didn't , just removed it somewhere where she forgot about it and quietly freecycled it when I couldn't find out what shop it came from.
womblingfree · 13/10/2009 12:34

Have just culled a load of Playdoh. I was desperate for DD to be old enough to play with it but ever since she has been (is now 5) I have just groaned everytime she suggests getting it out.

Anything with tiny pieces annoys the hell out of me, as does the Tinkerbell Magic Flower Garden Game which not only has tiny pieces but goes on forever and is mind-numbingly boring.

Would dearly love to get rid of her ELC toy kitchen and all the crap that goes with it, but can't see me getting away with that for the forseeable, even though she only plays with the bloody thing about 3 times a year.

womblingfree · 13/10/2009 12:35

PS: My friends DS is potty training at the mo and recently dropped a turd in his big sisters fuzzy felt box - perhaps that's somthing you could arrange when your lo is a bit older Undercova !

bubblerock · 13/10/2009 12:38

Wait until you get trading cards!! Bloody Yu Gi Oh and Pokemon or whatever is the game of the moment all over the house - they get everywhere!!

traceface · 13/10/2009 12:46

thanks for the moonsand views...dd1 has been asking for moonsand for ages and I was thinking father Christmas might bring some this year, but perhaps he won't after all!
we have a de-clutter every few months - mainly because our house is not huge and there's very little storage. Together with dd1 (age 5) we go through her 'art' and other such bits of paper/ craft stuff that she's made, all her tat, like Macdonalds happy meal toys (no of course she never eats junk food ), party bag bits and bobs etc, and toys and books - we sit down together and make piles of 'definitely keep', 'give to dd2', 'give to charity shop' and 'bin it'. She actually enjoys the process and feels grown up and I guess in control, so it works well most of the time. Having said that there are things that she would 'definitely keep' and I would 'bin it', so we hide them for a while (as others have suggested) and if she's not noticed after a few weeks they vanish...!
oh and fuzzy felt - I loved it as a kid and love playing with dd1's too

HowlingAtTheMoon · 13/10/2009 13:01

I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter how big your house is, it still just gets filled with crappy kids stuff! I think it breeds until there is no space left, I am sure I haven't bought all the stuff in my house .

PurpleCrazyHorse · 13/10/2009 13:26

Eek... I just bought Fuzzy Felt for 5yo god-daughter as figured it didn't need mum's help - unlike crafty things! Hoping mum's not someone on here moaning about it.

Unfortunately Lego is also the bane of my life but not because of DD (only 7 weeks!) but DH - we currently have Lego spaceships on the lounge unit next to the TV!

However, I've got a big bag of newborn tat ready for the charity shop / freecycle - starting as I mean to go on Currently dreading Christmas.

Original poster
Undercovamutha · 13/10/2009 13:32

PurpleCrazyHorse - it wasn't my DD you bought the fuzzyfelt for ! I actually bought it for her myself so I only have myself to blame!
I'm sure your god-daughter will love it - and at 5 is possibly old enough to use it as it was intended (rather than as an artistic carpet covering!).

OP posts:
BalloonSlayer · 13/10/2009 13:53

I also bought Fuzzy Felt for my DCs, remembering that we had played with it a lot as children.

Then when we got it out of the box I recalled that we had probably only played with it a lot because more interesting toys were yet to be invented.

We had even bought the special "Thomas" set and it was shite.

deaddei · 13/10/2009 13:58

YANBU.
They will not notice- if they do, say "you must have put it somewhere safe".
I loathed Polly Pockets, Lego and anything which represented mess- shaky glitter, little sticky things.
Like balloonslayer, many toys hit the charity shops before they were even unwrapped- those Horrible Science experiments like exploding volcanos, come to mind.
I still dread the Monopoly board coming out...all the houses and hotels.

LyraSilvertongue · 13/10/2009 14:02

Right, this thread has inspired me to have a clear-out.
We have a whole drawer where bits of toys and 'I don't know what toys it's come off but better keep it just in case' bits and bobs.
Just in time to have the house filled with crap again come Christmas.

choccyp1g · 13/10/2009 14:06

I had fuzzy felt as a child and remember loving it, but it was just shapes, and you made your own pictures using your imagination. Nowadays it is lots of tiny ready made bits and I hate it.

stealthsquiggle · 13/10/2009 14:07

I sometimes usually am not terribly thorough about peeling every single bit of fuzzy felt off the carpet before I hoover - we are refining the set down to the larger pieces now (and i have only myself to blame - I bought the flipping stuff)

DS, fortunately, still believes that Mummy will tidy-with-a-bin-bag if he doesn't do it at the umpteenth threat request so he confines his tat reasonably well to his room.

The only toy that has ever actually been binned in working order was an intensely annoying power rangers wrist band thing that DS was given when he was 3. DH binned it without consulting me, but it was me who spent the next 3 months (I kid you not) telling DS it would turn up when he kept asking for it . I tend to go for putting it in a box for a few weeks to see if they miss it or not first, and then recycle it in some direction (charity shop, normally) unless it is broken in which case I will bin the bits.

Quite a few battery operated toys mysteriously 'lose' their batteries which then take weeks/months/forever to get around to replacing, though.

choccyp1g · 13/10/2009 14:07

But I find it very hard to throw DS toys out. In my heart, I feel they are not mine to throw away. I have to hide things in the shed for 3 years before I can recognise that they are for example cr*p.

HowlingAtTheMoon · 13/10/2009 14:13

Has anyone had those power rangers that make the animal noises if you so much as look at them funny? DS got loads for his birthday. They are all in the bin now.

I also on Sunday cleared his chair of the 5000 cuddly toys. I let him select enough of his favourites that would fit on the end of his bed and told him the rest were going to children who had no teddies. He was fine (after a bit of persuading), I am getting hard in my old age.

stealthsquiggle · 13/10/2009 14:15

You are hard, Howling - my DS has 100's (literally) of soft toys - a huge overflowing hamper of them as well as the selection on his bed - and there is no way I would get away with throwing any out. Other toys, possibly, but never the animals.

Original poster
Undercovamutha · 13/10/2009 14:17

Oh no not the animals - I draw the line at those !

OP posts:
HowlingAtTheMoon · 13/10/2009 14:18

Stealth it has taken a loooooooong time but I finally flipped when yet another incident of a friend coming over had them thrown everywhere!! Secretly I love the cuddlies but I just can't stand the huge pile! We did keep the best ones.

HowlingAtTheMoon · 13/10/2009 14:19

Oh now you're all making me feel bad!

LyraSilvertongue · 13/10/2009 14:21

I actually don't mind the Lego and the building blocks and cars - stuff that they use their imagination to pay with. It's the battery-operated tat toys I hate. they always end up in the toy box with no batteries in them.
Mine are 7 and 5 and they still build complicated structures with their Megabloks.

LissyGlitter · 13/10/2009 14:24

we have a policy of taking annoying toys round to grandparents houses. It is they who give her the stupid battery operated things, they can deal with them! Irritating talking igglepiggles, loud toy pianos, mouth organs, horrible pink fairy castles, all distributed around grandparents and great grandparents houses

Doesn't mean she can't be annoying with other stuff though - "look mummy, the pen is green! Mummy, green! Green, mummy, green! It's a green pen!" For hours. And it's not like I'm ignoring her, I try and look interested in said green pen. Meh.

stealthsquiggle · 13/10/2009 14:29

Anything without an off switch is not long for this world if it enters our house - we had a couple of things when DS was a baby which were motion-activated and used to go off if you walked past the toy box .

I would happily make an exception to the 'no culling of animals' rule for DD's talking Rupert the Bear, but she loves him and gets upset if he won't talk to her .

BigusBumus · 13/10/2009 14:56

I have two banes of my life (is that correct Englis?!).

  1. Go-gos. They are supposed to be all in one box, but i seem to find them absolutely everywhere. Especially when i have no shos on.

  2. Anything sword-like. These can be actual swords bought at the gift shop of everywhere we've ever vistited. (Why do they all sell them? I try and steer him towards the nice notebook and pencil set, and my heart sinks when he sees the stand full of swords).
    But they also take the form of wrapping paper innards, bamboo canes and the worst, Bread-sticks. Its only a matter of time before one of the 3 DSs gets clouted by another and is crying. Most of the sword arsenal lives above the kitchen cupboards on permanent confiscation.