Marie Kondo - kids toys and books

[hopingforadvice]

Help! I have diligently Kondo-ed most areas in the house but I’m really struggling with toys. We already rotate toys (though I need to further reduce how many are out at a time).

Everytime I’ve taken all the toys out I can’t seem to part with any as I think my children love them all. I’ve wasted countless weeks devising ever more complicated toy rotation schedules etc but we still end up tripping over toys all day and the house looking like a whirlwind has ripped through it.

We have no toy room - so all toys are in the living room. For context we have a tv stand with 4 rectangular baskets and 4 drawers, and a cube storage unit with 9 cubes - so 17 toys available at a time between a 3.5 and 1.5 year old. Plus a small basket for one oversized item per week eg: train set, dolls, etc. So actually 18!

Between them they easily have 200 books as well - paperbacks, sets and board books. I tried to Kondo those too but was too attached to them all and only ended up parting with less than 5 🙈 Both children love to read however I’m worried they’ve too many. Hardback and board books are stored across 3 ’cubes’ of a Billy bookcase and all paperbacks are stored in a wooden box/crate.

Help! 🏊🏻‍♀️

I have been persisting (not consistently) with the Kondo method for a few years and the kids stuff is really tough. I've got a wooden train set, nothing special, that I actually said this weekend "is for the grandchildren" when my eldest is 10, so mentally I'm storing that for another 15yrs. Why am I doing that? It's going this week.

That said, I'm about 5 yrs on from you and my youngest has strong Marie Kondo vibes- she discards anything that doesn't bring her joy! 5 bags this week alone, plus she started on DS10's stuff in case he tries to give it to her.

For now, I'd massively reduce the amount of stuff that they have access to in the family areas, if you have space for it to be elsewhere. Here in the last 2 yrs or so I'd say we had a toy kitchen and a cupboard for board games/lego in the "family" areas with all books upstairs and any dolls and plastic crap safely in their rooms. Prior to that we had the dressing up stuff in a drawer in the lounge rather than upstairs so it was more easily accessible, but mainly we've kept the toys confined to (very messy) rooms upstairs where I don't have to see it.

If it helps, Marie Kondo has now had children and has reluctantly admitted that with children in a house, it's not feasible (or desirable) to live a truly Kondo-esque life.

It won't help you practically, but may stop you striving too hard for perfection!

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/01/30/entertainment/marie-kondo-stops-tidying-intl-scli/index.html

Thanks for your replies! I’ve finally got their bedroom minimal and manageable so I’m reluctant to let any more drift upstairs. Their room feels calm and so quick to tidy. Downstairs in comparison feels suffocating and loud! Sounds silly but then I wonder what I’d put in the blank cubes if I removed some toys 🙈

We live in a small flat with one nearly two year old toddler.

We have such a similar set up in our living room to yours (no play room). One unit with 4 cube spaces with baskets in them, and two open sections above it. In the baskets I keep all the open ended things: brio train tracks etc in one, various building blocks in two of them, and magnatiles in the last one.

In the open sections I set out little invitations to play on rotation. So maybe some puzzles ready to be solved, little peg people and building blocks, his toy garage and some cars, or various bits and bobs of cardboard recycling and small to cars to play with.

Then we have the big cube unit storage with 12 spaces. That has baskets of all his toys and activities for rotation. If anything doesn't fit it has to go as we just don't have the space to keep adding more with nowhere to put it. Thankfully, we can send some things to toy boxes at grandparents houses and when he visits they're like fresh to him again! As he outgrows certain toys we have been careful to keep the nicest ones and box them up to store away as we are thinking of buying a house and having another child.

In the meantime we also have the book dilemma. His bedroom is tiny so he only has his cot, two baskets of toys and a bookshelf. It's the kind of bookshelf where the books are front facing. Perfect for him choosing his own books, but limits the number of books to around 12 at a time. So I do a rotation for those as well but we're at the stage now where I think we need to go through the books and send a fair few to the charity shop.

When we have a bigger house I want to go book crazy! But for now I think the solution is to store his most loved books that we decide to keep on forward facing racks that mount on the wall, to save space. And relegate the other bookshelf to library books. We can make a regular outing to the library part of our routine and it means books are being rotated without piling up in our tiny flat.

Would this work for you? My son has never ripped a book (this will jinx it now of course!) so I think it's worth a try.

I get really attached to kids’ toys and books too. I gave some toys to a church group but have kept loads, but I did get decent storage. When my kids were your kids’ age my house was never tidy!