How to kondo baby and children's stuff

[daisydalrymple]

Hi, I know there's the ongoing thread on this, but I just want to ask a few specific questions, and I think it's more common sense answers I'm looking for than anything

I have 3 dcs, age 8, 6 and 15mo. I have a house full of clutter. Had a good start before Christmas with a lot of stuff on eBay. Started kondo-ing clothes, books, papers so far so good.

However, I have ELC in my house. People bought us so much stuff with dcs 1&2. We've totally reduced the amount coming in the house, but how to decide what stays and what goes with toys?? Dc3 will see something and play with it 'joyfully' for 10 mins, then wander off for a wooden spoon, loo roll etc. out of any given age group of toys, how do you decide which to keep?? He gives them all equal amounts of limited attention, as is typical at that age. I'm not getting rid of it all, just to rebuy in a few months...???

Anybody successfully sorted out toys and reduced them down to a quality select collection??

Just marking my place for later

I think this is the hardest bit of Kondo. I do find it helps to have a thorough sort of toys with a bin bag even if its just to bin missing pieces or oddments and group things like cars, jigsaws, craft items. I filled a bin bag in 30 minutes just "whittling". Either that or hide stuff and if they don't ask for it, in a few months then bin it or charity shop it.

To be honest, it's not so much current stuff for ds1 and dd, it's all of their baby and toddler stuff, which is now coming out of the loft for ds2. It's all really good quality but I just don't think he needs that much.

And I haven't even started getting happyland down yet, dear lord!!!

Myself, I think the answer is to prune the current stuff - don't try to look ahead, as you'll inevitably get rid of the ONE thing that the new child adores, but your previous two never looked twice at.

I haven't had this issue with toys so much, but have with clothes - no 2 year old needs 20 pairs of trousers, even if they are all really nice ones! In that case I picked the 8 best, and gave all the rest to Oxfam, knowing they'd get a nice bit for them.

I feel (and observe) that less really is more with toys, especially for littlies. If you can't bear to properly get rid of stuff, then why not get three big tubs. Keep two in the attic/behind the sofa, and just have one on the go. Change tubs every few days. (We sort of do this, but DS3 has now discovered the 'toy attic'...)