Managing Toy Clutter

When they were younger we would have a bin in the living room and just rotate them each week. Or try anyways! But now they are at the age where I tell them no more toys down until the ones you are done with go back up

The bulk of our stuff is in the family room closet. I have the doors off the closet, so the kids can wheel out bins.

The toys do migrate to the rest of the house occasionally, but I remind them to put them away before bringing anything else out or before we eat...in fact, we do general clean up before all meals and snacks. This keeps the house in order...5 minutes a few times a day and things stay clean :-)

We have stacks of Rubbermaid bins in the basement that are all labeled. The kids could ask for whatever toy they want, but I did not let them have more than a few. Then when they stopped playing with the toys, we would pack them all up and go to the basement and select a few new bins. It made the toys seem "new" since they had not been out for a long time. My kids are now 13 and 16 and recently they took a whole bunch of doll bins (Barbies, Polly Pockets, Bratz, etc.) into the guest room and played for hours! They also wanted to buy some kind of plush toy and I made them wait and go look at the bin filled with plushies. Again they played for a long time and happily remembered who gave them what and the names the plush animals had. I found that if you leave everything visible, even in open bins along the wall like we used to, the kids just become so familiar with all the stuff that they basically do not "see" the toys anymore. So get a bunch of Rubbermaid bins, get some packing tape and some 3 x 5 cards and mark all the bins with what is in them. If your kids are really young you can paste pictures of the toys on the outside so they can choose themselves. We use Rubbermaid bins since our basement is not finished and we needed something that sealed well.

We also have a "play room" that the kids never play in so it may be better called the "toy room". To keep the whole house getting cluttered with toy's we put the toy's away in the play room when they are not being played with.

I periodically move 90% of the toys to the kids' bedrooms. Of course they want to play where we are, so toys are constantly migrating back down.

I have a set of cube shelves with bins on them in the living room. They need to put the toys away in the bins each night. And when so many toys have migrated down that the bins are full, that's my cue to take them all back upstairs. This happens about every 6 weeks or so.

And about twice a year I go through the toys in their rooms, and donate the toys that I haven't seen anyone play with in a long time.

My rule is this:

A toy that comes out of the play room goes into time out. It's in time out the rest of the day.

If they walk in the room with a toy I immediately say "That toy goes into time out, put it there now please". If they don't I go take it from them and put it there myself. They know I'm the boss.

They forgot a few times but once they lost that toy for the day or earned it back by doing chores like crazy they didn't do it anymore. They still have that rule even in the new house. I don't have toy clutter in my rooms.

We're a "one toy at a time" family...or at least, we try to be. They're allowed to play with whatever they want, but they need to put it away before pulling out something new. If they're having a "big" event where several things get pulled out (princess dress up with multiple dresses, a tea party with a variety of toys in attendance, etc) everything gets put away before moving on to the next "thing." We also do a quick clean up before we go get ready for the bedtime routine.

We have a closet/bins for toys.
My kids, put it away.
Per category or shelf or what have you.
I don't do it nightly.
They don't either. I don't expect that, because they can and will play with certain toys for several days. So why put it away each night, they will just take it out again, when they wake up.
Once they are done with it, then they put it back. And sometimes many types of toys comes out at one time.
It doesn't bother me.
They know where things go back.
They can do it.
And they do.
It is all reasonable and doable for them and me.
I don't expect all toys to be put away on a shelf each night.
Its just me.
I'm pretty casual about it.
But still, the house is not a "mess."

My kid is on the tidy side, and daycare helped establish the one toy at a time, and clean as you play idea. We don't have clutter, toys are put away every time we leave the house, and again nightly. Robots clean our floors 4x a week.

certain toys are put away and come out again on rainy days. keeps them fresh.

Life is good.
F. B.

When my kids were smaller everything was in plastic bins. Then they would just throw everything in them when they were done. One year, my mom took the kids with her on vacation for a week and I went through all the kids toys and downsized. I got rid of SIX huge black plastic bags of stuff. THAT really made it easier to keep track of and the kids didn't even miss it. So if you stay on top of getting rid of what they don't play with anymore, that makes it much easier to manage. Good luck.