With the holidays behind us and the girls' birthdays come and gone, I can't help but stare at the house in horror. So. Many. Toys. I don't know what to do with them all. I know that they don't need so many (obviously!! Who needs that much?!) but I don't know what to donate. I feel like this is a dilemma that many parents face in today's materialistic and plastic age.
We recently dismantled our guest bedroom and turned it into a play room. This is awesome because at the end of the day, you just toss the toys in there and shut the door. This sucks because at the end of the day, you just toss the toys in there and shut the door. The sheer volume of toys housed in there is staggering. Ideally, I would love to cut the number of toys we have in half so that N & D could participate more in cleaning. It's hard to ask N to clean up her toys when they have no "home" in the playroom. Also, the size of the room has amplified the clutter. When it was spread out across the entire first floor of our house, it was more pervasive, but less overwhelming. Now, their toys live in two rooms: the play room (which no one plays in because it's a wreck) and the sun room. The sun room is mainly used for messy play, such as play doh, paint, markers, etc., and as additional toy storage. Yup. MORE toy storage.
I think my problem is that I become unreasonably sentimentally attached to their toys. I feel attached to toys that certain people gave them, just because I love that person. I feel attached to toys that are expensive, because I think that the girls need to get the giver's "money's worth" out of it. I feel attached to toys that they played with as babies. Hell, I'll feel attached to a toy merely because we've had it for a long time! It's hard to separate the feelings of false sentimentality with being truly attached to a toy that the girls loved (and would appreciate if it was saved.) That being said, I read somewhere that a person's memories usually start around age 4. N & D won't be missing a plastic baby rattle 20 years from now.
Another problem (if you can really call it that!) is that we have very generous and thoughtful friends and family. They love us and they love our daughters. And they LOVE to make our girls happy! As their parents, I think that my husband and I have bought maybe 15% of their toys and clothes. It's actually gotten easier since the girls are a little older (2 and 4! sniff, sniff!). Now we get a lot of art supplies, cool books, and clothes for them. Which is awesome. But we still get a lot of toys, too. I think we need to do a toy purge before the holidays and birthday times so that the girls can enjoy their new toys more, rather than losing them in the morass of the play room. I also need to be better prepared when someone asks me what to get the girls.
I recently ran across a blog, Play at Home Mom, that got my wheels turning in the direction of where I want to be. They write mostly about raising their young children through child-led play and learning. Their play rooms are astonishing. It's more than I feel like I am able to do, but I want to at least incorporate elements of their environments into my own. Maybe if I had seen this before we had children, it would be feasible. A lot of it centers around instilling respect for your environment at a very young age. D would kill someone, or herself, if she had easy access to one third of their play environment (glass, scissors, staple guns). If I had a do-over, I would have taught her better. Now, I guess I just have to wait for her to get a little older!
It's easy to think objectively about what to do about the mess of toys, but a lot harder to put into practice. Maybe I just need to jump in and start in a small spot. Divide and conquer.
Anyway, new goal. Clean up the damn toys.
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