What's your time limit on chucking toys? Pre-christmas prep

[Blessedbethefruitz]

By chucking I mean charity, selling, passing on, etc.

We're amassing mountains of puzzles atm as ds4 can't get enough of them. Does at least 2 a day, 200-300 pieces (with help of course). But no storage left to keep them. Meanwhile I have kallax cubes of toys that remain closed for weeks on end. Adding them up, we have 22 storage cubes (kallax or trofast) plus bookshelves etc of toys. Around 4 cubes are opened regularly (octonauts, duplo, things with wheels, puzzles), as the stuff that gets played with more usually doesnt fit in, like lego storage bricks and a big hot wheels garage. And then theres all the other 'stuff', mainly to help with his sensory seeking (wobble boards, rocker chair, ball pit travel cot, etc) taking up all the space. When I try to sort through them, he couldn't possibly part with any of it, or he'll pick one stuffy...

So does anyone have a time limit - not played with in 1/6/12 months and it goes? It's tricky as we have dd1 who i dont want to deprive! But except for a few special played with daily items - all small like her baby doll - she seems less into toys and more into people.

Im drowning in (mostly) toys so im spending all my time tidying, and Christmas is coming... Definitely buying much less this year!

Categorise toys and rotate them- so small world (little people, farm set, train set, garage), educational, craft/arty, musical/noisy, TV character etc...and so then only one of each type is available for the month. Some stuff could get chucked out when sorting, but often kids will revisit old toys so dont be too harsh.
Add things to existing toys for xmas and birthdays to avoid cluttering...

Big, plastic/noisy items that have never been favourites will be cleared out after a few months of not being used.

The more 'worthy' toys (marble run, small world stuff, stem toys) stays even if it hasn't been used for a good while, particularly if there is a younger one coming up who might play with it. Anything that has been a big favourite also gets kept even if it's fallen out of favour in recent times.

If you have space to put stuff away it's good to do that and then rotate stuff around. You can even put it away and then wrap and gift to the younger on.

With puzzles I tend to use the charity shop like a library, buy some, do to death, return and buy some more. In some areas there are actual puzzle libraries. This helps keep the number of puzzles reasonable while still offering a good selection.

The most key thing to avoid masses of stuff though is to just stop buying it in the first place. They don't need huge mountains of presents for birthdays or Christmas.

Just get rid of it if you don't think they're going to realistically play with it again.

The puzzles he likes to do over and over. We do have a great charity shop round the corner just for kids toys/clothes etc. Most of the electronic crap is gone as his sister doesn't care for it. I'm not sure about things like the paw patrol pups and vehicles that get used less than once a month but take up and entire box 😅 Whereas octonauts are played with weekly by both, and still watched.

Definitely look at categories. In your building category you would have dulpo and lego. If he is playing with lego then you no longer need duplo.

@Whawillthefuturebring The duplo is more used than the lego - and his 1 year old sister is only just getting to grips with the duplo stacking!

How are you storing the puzzles? DD1 is puzzle mad so I ditched all the boxes, making sure to cut the picture of the puzzle off the front, and I keep them in plastic zip bags. Saves a lot of space v all those boxes.

It's a bit of a judgement call imo. If the toy is not being played with because the dc are on the young side for it then I'd keep it much longer that if it was tat.

So magazine tat, or cheap crafts sets that don't work properly are lucky if I give them a few weeks, the toy farm got about two years grace.

@Clefable Right now they're in original boxes piled up here and there. I'm not sure how he would feel about re boxing them like this, although would save loads of space!

For puzzles our local library has a monthly puzzle sell/swap. We regularly use this to swap ours for new ones.
The toys that does not get played for a while here get a regularly given away/chucked as we live in a tiny house.

I've cleared and consolidated a few boxes today to fit the puzzles in now :) Too hot to go anywhere!

I don't do it with time limits but I do find it really helps to consolidate types of toys and weed out the less-used or identify the best versions to keep, this also helps remove bits that are lost/broken/etc.

Then once consolidated storing them in those groups, which means that when DC want to play with cars, they don't have to root through assorted farm animals and when they want to play farm, they aren't throwing the cars all over the floor trying to get to them. (Or whatever).

When you find toys with a million pieces that can't be used without those pieces but the pieces all get scattered, collate them all and store somewhere less accessible.

If you have space to store, pack it up in a box to donate and put a date on it for 6 months/year and if you or they haven’t looked for the stuff in that time, donate it without opening it!