How many toys should a 2 year old have?

[HeyCat]

We went massively overboard buying toys for our 2 year old. He's also been given loads of things by family, and it's become ridiculous.

E.g. He has five (!) toy garages, 2 toy kitchens with tons of play food etc, his train set completely covers the floor of the living room, he has an entire ottoman toy box thing just for his duplo....

It's too much. I've taken to rotating it out and I think he's calmer and plays better with fewer toys visible. We're trying to declutter so thinking of taking lots of toys to the charity shop, but I've lost all perspective on what's normal!

So...can anybody tell me roughly how many toys their 2 year old has or how much space the toys take up?

I am full of good intentions to be ruthless but I am guilty of "but she really likes xyz"

One of the things I am good at though is culling duplicates, they go to grandma's house or charity shop. No one needs 5 garages, keep the best one.

I have two dc, both girls, 4 and 2. Everything is in boxes from The Range which fit in an Ikea kallax unit. We have:

Happy land (currently on death row)
Duplo / Lego junior
Play Mobil 123
Sylvanians
Dollies and associated bottles, pram etc
Games / jigsaws
Craft stuff
Brio and various wooden animals
Musical instruments which are all too big for a box, very upsetting
A box of unidentified small tat with no home or classification
A massive chest of soft toys which is my nemesis!

We've got too much. The website onehundredtoys is interesting and worth reading.

Starting with duplicates of the big items would make sense - I can get rid of 4 garages and 1 kitchen.

Would you say you roughly have one box of each of the categories you listed? I'm struggling with stuff where it makes sense to have duplicates (e.g. Duplo, small cars, train tracks) but he has so so much of it!

My son is 16 months and already has far too much stuff. He doesn't even play with most of it. Trilbydoll, I've just looked on the one hundred toys website, and it's great! Thanks for sharing, I'd never heard of it before

I have two DD's, 3 and 6. They are spoilt rotten by extended family. I am I think the right amount of rutheless and sentimental! About three months after their. Irthdays I start to filter out anything they got that they've just. It been interested in. I pass on to friends or charity. Never keep duplicates. This doesn't include things like further play food for the tea trolley, new trains for the track - but 5 garages would not happen! We just don't have the space and This is a home, not a small brand of Argos. We have plastic trugs/boxes for bits and keep what fits. The one things we have a lot of is books. Eldest is a massive bookworm so it can't really be helped.

I would rid yourself of the duplicates, pare down what you have to what gets played with and what's age appropriate or sentimental (the rattles, jangly balls yes can go) and organise what's left. I honestly find mine play so much better when not faced with so much 'stuff'.

We tend to cull duplicates too.

So we have, for instance, one garage, one dolls house, one easel, one toolbench.

Bit trickier getting rid of duplicates of smaller toys, but when it comes to things like cars, trains, and so on, I tend to keep any that are particularly distinctive, and the better quality ones, and sift out the ones that are very generic and / or poor quality.

In terms of how much of each to keep - I guess it depends a lot on how much space you have and how much he plays with them. We have an utterly ludicrous amount of train tracks and track accessories, but that's also the toy that gets the most play time in our house, so a high volume of train toys is something we're okay with at the minute.

Ooh watching as DS has far too many toys I think!

My two year old has way too many toys! If I have duplicates I will put one in kitchen one in bedroom give one to grannys etc but it's usually smaller things like trucks. Most toys kept on kitchen in an ikea 3x3 drawer with a spare cupboard for extra stuff that I will occasionally swap stuff over.
Toys he's too old for I have put upstairs for ds 2 who will be here in the new year!

I have a fifteen month old. These are all of his toys and I am about to get rid of the plastic activity centre thing - he will then have the right number as that is all he can play with.

He will have:
A few cars
Building blocks
Bob the builder hat
A few jigsaws
Ring stacker
A wooden starship enterprise (this is actually DH's toy
A pretend medical kit that he likes to pack in and out of a box

I think that is it.

We have several children and so have built up a lot of toys. I have recently culled about three quarters of their toys and kept:
Wooden toys
Jigsaws
Play tent/playhouse
Toy kitchen
Most active toys eg balls, scooters, toy cars etc
Farm animals
Lego
Blocks for building
Arts and crafts stuff
Some toy cars and dolls
Dressing up clothes
I have got rid so much plastic crap and small toys that get broken and never played with. They have so much less now and they play with it all much more and do more creative things. It's easier to find things and getting rid of lots of the big hulking plastic things makes it all look nicer. Everything has a place and everything that doesn't has gone. I have been quite ruthless but it is so much nicer.
They definitely don't need a lot of the stuff.

He also has a tent and crawl tunnel in his nursery

I forgot the dressing up box too, lots of strange items in there. And the kitchen / food which is currently in the garage as part of a toy rotation.

I aim for one box of each, it's difficult with things like games and jigsaws where I can't control the box it comes in!

Things like Duplo and train track I would keep it all because I'm not convinced you can have too much but trains, I think I would try and work out realistically how many can be on the track at one time.

I feel bad getting rid of presents, esp from our siblings, I have stuff in the loft awaiting nieces and nephews so I can effectively return some presents!

Toys do tend to be huge when they're little. As kids grow, the toys shrink and it isn't quite as in your face as mountains of Duplo is!

This was the picture I meant to post

I have two dc, 3.5 year old ds and 22 month dd and they have quite a lot of toys. They have:

• 4 toy boxes of "toys" (the foldy up ikea ones)so shape sorters, pull along toys, pop up things etc
• 9 or 10 card jigsaws and maybe the same wooden ones
• box of play food and play over/cooker
• two baskets of cars
• box of diggers

-brio train set and trains -basket of wooden blocks -toot toot garage and cars (9 or 10) -stackados -box of happy land toys and happy land house -basket of animals -Thomas the tank train set -massive box of duplo

• big box of musical instruments
• plastic crap train set which will break soon!

Plus countless books. I'm a SAHM so they're at home a fair bit and also we don't have much family nearby so they don't play at grandparents house or anything. They have some in their rooms and we have a playroom.

Forgot about bag of finger and hand puppets and dressing up clothes!

We rotate. We have one small basket with 10ish things (car / cuddly toy / sorting game / sensory thing / instrument etc) within her reach.

She knows where the other things are and can ask for them.

Blocks for building and paper / pens are always on offer.

She spends about 80% of her time emptying the recycling bin, though, so not sure why I bother!

This is really interesting.

Spent some time today sorting the baby toys into categories to decide what to bring out for our baby, which is helping me see all the duplication (3 shape sorters, 2 stacking rings, 4 types of pull along toys....)