It’s safe to say that most kids have too many toys. Between Christmas, birthdays, and other random gifts during the year, it is so easy to acquire TOO MANY toys.

It happened to us without me even realizing it until it was too late. The big kids had toys, of course, (they were 6 and 9 when Sylas was born), but those toys were easier to contain in bedrooms because the kids didn’t require CONSTANT supervision and there were only 2 of them.

When Sylas was a newborn, we had only a couple toys because he didn’t really play yet. When he started moving that all changed. Grandma was buying him every toy she saw, Christmas came and he was spoiled by every person on both sides of the family, and then 5 months later was his birthday.

All of a sudden we had toys EVERYWHERE. Josie was born not long after that and within a year, we had even MORE toys because she’s a girl and needed her own stuff (at least that’s what everyone said).

Then we had Liam so add even more toys at Christmas and another birthday into the mix. Plus random pickups and hand me downs and we were literally drowning.

There were toys EVERYWHERE. Upstairs, downstairs, in the car, in the hallway, EVERYWHERE. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t keep up with the cleaning up, organizing, etc.

It was time to get it under control.

What to do When You Are Drowning In Toys

1. 1. Get rid of toys that aren’t played with or are missing pieces. I started with the toys that my kids never touched. I didn’t ask them what they WANTED to get rid of because their answer probably would have been “nothing”. Instead, when they weren’t paying attention I started getting rid of things that they just didn’t play with or that was broken/missing pieces. We donated some, threw away others (happy meal toys, broken toys, remote control cars with missing parts, puzzles with missing pieces, etc.). This actually cleared out a ton of the junk.
   2. Use baskets or clear plastic totes to organize and store all toys. Yep, all of them. Amazon has a ton of different sizes to choose from but I mostly use the plastic totes pictured below, which come in a pack of 12. I also have several that are a little bigger, which I also found on amazon. I believe you can also find some small totes at dollar tree or dollar general.Label them and store them in an easy to access place. I put toys that have a lot of pieces that go together or follow a specific theme (Mr. Potato Head, horses, animals, balls, etc.) in the clear plastic totes and I label the front. I want to put pictures on them soon, too. I store larger toys in baskets. One holds all musical instruments.

1. Choose toys to leave out, but only choose enough that each toy has a “home” and won’t get mixed in with other toys. Everything should have a home. You can’t expect the toys to be organized and put away if there is no designated “area” for them. This has been the hardest part for me because we don’t have a ton of space for storing toys. I still want a cube organizer (pictured below) to have a couple more things out but we use a toy organizer with 12 bins (also pictured below). It works really well for us and the toys we have because the kids can easily see what toys they can play with and can pull the whole bin down when they want to play.

   We choose 12 different “themes”, one theme for each bin (Ex. balls, blocks, PJ masks, Paw Patrol, Mr. Potato Head, horses, animals, technology, hot wheels, magnatiles, music, puzzles, etc.).We also use our entertainment center to store toys. I know this is kind of ridiculous but they get into it anyway so why not. LOL. In there we store a handful of books, a couple puzzles, and a couple other toys that won’t fit in a bin.

2. Decide where (out of sight) you are going to store some (or most) toys. We use our hall linen closet. I hate it but we don’t have much storage so it works for us. You just need a place that has shelves.I put all of the totes and baskets of toys in the closet, even the empty containers from the toys that are out are neatly stored here. Make sure it is easy to see what is in there so you can switch toys out regularly and put toys back in their labeled container.
3. Set a schedule for rotation. Each week or month, let the kids help choose what toys should be brought out and what ones should be put away for a while. Not only will this help lessen the toy clutter in your home, but it will also help your kids appreciate their toys more.
4. For bigger toys (toy kitchens, etc.) place all small pieces out of reach and designate times to play with it. Usually, I want these kinds of toys readily available to the kids but there are certain times when I’m busy (usually getting ready to leave the house) that Liam dumps all the pieces on the floor and wanders away. This leads to the pieces getting scattered all throughout the house and it usually happens during our busiest times of day. What works for us is to leave the smaller pieces (the play food) out of sight and out of reach when you aren’t able to pay as close attention or don’t have the time to help clean up the pieces.

Kids thrive on simplicity so don’t feel bad that your child doesn’t have EVERY toy they own accessible at one time. That’s overwhelming for everyone involved and leads to toys being forgotten, damaged, or lost and also leads to having a house cluttered with toys because nothing has a “home”.

What are some ways you’ve tried to combat toy clutter in your home? What worked and what didn’t? Let me know in the comments!