Toy clear out - just where to start???

[jules2906]

Hi all

Looking for some wisdom/advice...

Toys are just about taking over my house and I need to get a grip on them but my efforts are so half hearted and never seem to have any kind of impact.

So, any tips for how to have a completely ruthless clearout and actually make some space? The children (5 yo b/g twins) are loathe to part with anything so asking them is a non starter....

Thanks in anticipation!!

How about starting with chucking all the broken toys and ones with bits missing?

I did this the other day, I'm still trying to recover .
Bin bags, one for rubbish, one for charity shop anything that hasn't been played with in the last few months goes. My DD has colected Scooby doo stuff for years, it got put into the roofspace.

I make the DDs have a clearout every year before Santa comes, they have to help Santa by giving decent toys to the poor babies

Get rid of anything that is too young for them, broken or that they haven't played with in a long time (unless you know they love it).

Keep them in the garage, shed, car for a couple of weeks if you can, just in case you have misjudged and they ask for something.

Take to charity shop after elapsed time.

Don't do it when the dc are there wait until they are in bed or get someone to look after them.
Get three big boxes and a binbag,
Keep, put in anything you know they play with.
Not sure, put anything undecided in here and hide it. If they don't say where's my .... after a month get rid.
Toys to give away to charity or bootsale etc.
Put anything broken in the bin bag.

You can break this down if a mammoth clearout is daunting, by sorting a shelf or toybox or whatever a week/month.
Another thing I do is dump stuff on take some stuff to my Mums and Pil so they have toys to play with there too.

For each toy don't ask "do they ever play with this?" or "will they ever play with this again". If you do this you will throw out nothing .

Instead ask "will their lives be any worse if they don't have this".

and buy a trofast unit!!!

Thanks all for the suggestions - really helpful. Will defn put some stuff in the garage for a month 'just in case'. If I have the energy may well start this tonight as it's starting to wear me down even thinking about it!!

The firt thing to do is throw away all the broken toys or ones with missing parts etc.

Next go through them and sort out all the toys they have grown out of and pack these up for storage or charity shops/friends etc

Then make sure you have proper storage for everythin else.

Good luck.

I get DS to help me with this, we do it about once a year, but I only have the one DS and not that many toys really, I tihnk it's good if they are involved in the process, and they may be more inclined to keep them tidy for longer if they have sweated over tidying and sorting them themselves?