For those who like things to be kept minimal...

[Justfinewithoutit]

How do you deal with toys as your children get older? Son is nearly 4 and starting to be interested in Lego now which is a minefield of sets and little tiny parts. We're starting small with a few minifigures and tiny sets for his Christmas stocking.

So far his toys have been fairly minimal and he's been happy with what he has but I see this becoming trickier as he gets older. I'm sure some things will naturally be replaced in time like Lego for Duplo and so we won't keep things that he's too young for anymore.

At the moment he has 4 baskets of toys in an Ikea unit: Duplo, magnet tiles, soft toys, brio train tracks and trains. In addition to this he has a small dolls house with a few peg people and bits of furniture, a larger tractor and digger toy, a torch, plenty of books, a doctors set, a small box of kinetic sand and little diggers, and a Yoto player and cards. He has a swing and mud kitchen in the garden as well as a balance bike. We feel that's plenty and he plays well with everything.

Do you find it easily gets out of control with older children, or do you manage to keep things fairly contained?

4-6 was/is peak toy age here. I find siblings add to the toy chaos more than growing older does. As they get older they grow in and out of things, so you can sell or pass on as their interests change.

my 5 yr old still plays with toys but i know him well enough to know most toys for him have a 5 min interest grab. The range of toys he plays with consistently and doesn’t get bored with is small, mainly magnetic building toys, hot wheels, and transformers. Maybe that’s just luck?!

older sibling 7 is moving out of the toy stage. Playmobil, sylvanians, dolls etc only really come out when her friends are over. older sibling 9 is done with toys unless it’s sports equipment. Day to day they do crafts and make things, make dens and obstacle courses, read, play board or card games with each other, etc etc.

It’s hard resisting the urge to buy toys for children though. I’m bad at it even though I know they don’t need it / won’t use it much. Not having tv which plays commercials helps. As does not going into toy shops on the high st.

This is true of my son as well- a small range of toys that he always plays with and never gets bored of. I'll need to keep leaning into that as he gets older and try to tune in to what he really plays with, not just what looks like fun. Totally agree with no adverts helping, we're the same.

I’m on the decuttering threads and there was a time when I was more minimal but I agree with not getting rid of things too early coz it suits you, my younger 2 rediscovered Tomy drawing mats tonight, they really enjoyed them and did new stuff with them so I can’t really justify throwing/giving them away even tho I thought I had

Be careful what comes in to the house if you have kids who won't let go of things. Mine won't let me charity shop anything so it all accumulates massively.

the other thing to consider is open ended play. So that's the idea that a toy which is very defined limits the imagination and therefore gets played with less. These are usually the toys that have the wow factor when new but get played with for 20 mins and then forgotten. The best toys are things like wooden blocks, Duplo, cardboard and string, paper, sellotape and crayons, den building stuff (sheets, pegs and washing stands in our house) These are things that get used endlesslu for creative play. Soft toys have been good too as they all have characters and different voices and they can do different things. Our soft toys had pretend holidays, swimming lessons, sports tournaments, put on plays, acted out school, decorated the Xmas tree. Brio is good ibecause you can build different track layouts but you need lots of track which again doesn't have the wow factor as a gift but is the bit that gets played with most in our house.

So you can think about carefully selected toys if you want to limit how many you have in the house?

Nice article saying exactly the same as what I've found to be true https://fourtolove.com/open-ended-toys/

also, try and be outside a lot- tree climbing, ball games, making fairy houses out of sticks and leaves, beach/ sandpit play etc all provide hours of fun. They will bring all their stone/ stick/ shell collections back home though!

I've got a 7yo. Three words: Hot. Wheels. Tracks.

You'll be grateful for it just being Lego. At least you can shove Lego in a box.

We bought a Lego storage table - it is a game changer. The table top is divided in sections, one side is plain and the other side has Lego base boards on it. So you can flip the top over when you want it for a jigsaw or a board game. Under the table top are deep storage sections which are full of Lego and ds’s toy cars.

At this age go for mixed bags of Lego not sets. My ds age 3.5 onwards would play independently for hours building as high as he could, or building houses and garages for his toy cars. It really helped his fine motor skills and I think it’s why his handwriting is so good now.

Whilst you don’t do toy rotation it constantly amazes me that if you move toys from where you normally keep them, to somewhere else, they will be played with again.

I keep a small basket in ds room, and I pop in their random old toys. I never say a word but I will always discover them played with, usually downstairs, within a day or so.

Children like things to be switched around, novelty triggers imagination.

I also find that some of the more junior toys are brilliant for play dates - the brio train set will occupy several five years olds together for ages and ages and ages (as we were gifted huge amounts of it!)

The main thing is to get rid of old books and educational toys like alphabet jigsaws.

I have actually found it’s easier to get rid of adult crap than reduce toys, crafts and books! Thereby making space for the kids stuff.

Absolutely agree with getting rid of our stuff to prioritise his. We're very minimal to begin with so that leaves space for toys which take up so much room.

It's funny what you say about bringing things into view and they are suddenly played with. If I see a basket hasn't been played with in a while I'll take it out before I go to bed and set up a little scene. The next morning he's straight into playing with it. Moving things around making them interested in it reminds me of cats 😅 put something in a different place and our cat is all over it!