Pre-Christmas Toy Purge
November 29, 2010 by Marci
We have a little tradition at our house. It is the Pre-Christmas Toy Purge. It’s really simple and quite effective. It all started a few years ago when my husband and I found ourselves cringing at the thought of the kids getting more toys for Christmas. We are a 3 gift family ourselves. (It was good enough for Jesus…) However, grandparents, aunts and uncles never seem to catch on to that. Each Christmas, our kids bring home a car load of junk Christmas joy and I have to try and find a place for it all! So, we started the toy purge.
This is how the toy purge works. We sit down with the kids and ask them how many toys they want for Christmas. The number is always quite high. We then explain to them that there is no room in our house for anymore toys. If they want more, they better make some room. For every new toys that they want to come in, a new toy must go out. The number of toys they want for Christmas always drops to a more reasonable level at this point. When we all agree on a number, they start purging. The toys that they purge have to be ok’d by my husband and I. Happy meal toys don’t count. They can be purged, just not counted toward their total number needed.
This week, we are cleaning the kids bed rooms and doing this year’s toy purge. I always look forward to it. Their closets looks so clean and uncluttered…until about December 25th.
How do you handle the toy madness at your house?
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Comments (7)
Oh yes, we do this too! Nice idea on the deciding on an amount before beginning.
We have not had much trouble – our eldest has never had a hard time letting go of things. He’s amazingly able to distinguish quite easily what he’s not playing with anymore – and in some cases he specifically asks if we can donate a particular toy to someone who doesn’t have many toys. He’s a rare breed.
We do this as well. In addition to the Christmas toy invasion, BOTH of my girls have December birthdays. It is unreal how much stuff enters our home in December. So we have to purge or we would be overrun!!
I so love this idea. Less is always more. We have done various things through the years; I encourage you to continue this as they grow older in whatever way that fits.
This is something I’ve started having to do with our kids too. Thankfully, our families have been supportive (mostly) with our efforts to minimize the number of toys, so each kid only gets a few toys from each grandparent/aunt/uncle/etc, and more books {which we LOVE} than toys.
We have a LOT of closet space in our new home, so I’ve used a few of them to store bins of “extra” toys, only leaving a few toys out at a time for the kids to play with. This allows me to limit the mess {and corresponding pick-up time} and gives them new toys every few weeks {I rotate the toys when they start to get “bored” of playing with them}.
LOVE this idea! Specifically, agreeing on a number together, and it is a positive thing for the kids, as they are looking forward to making room!
Joining you from Gather Inspirit
[...] that everything should have it’s place. That’s why we make room before Christmas with the pre-Christmas toy purge. As I’m trying to put other things away, I’m finding out there are are other areas of our house [...]
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