How to Go Through the Playroom

Or, How to say good-bye to some of your kids’ toys so that you can reclaim your sanity as well as “the playroom” or whatever area the toys are rearing their unmanageably numerous heads in your home.

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I breathe a contented little sigh of “things are as they should be” when I arrive at the top of my stairs and gaze out at a vast expanse of carpet in all directions uninterrupted by toys and other “things that don’t belong here.” I wish I could say that this is what greets me at the top of the stairs every time, every day, but let’s be honest: I have three children aged six and under living up here. I feel confident that you can draw the right conclusions as to why my cleared carpets are a novelty, rather than the norm.

Lately, specifically since about two days after Easter, when the kids’ begging for more candy exceeded my tolerance threshold for “begging for things,” I had a chat with Justin about what to do about it. We both agreed they needed a reasonable (i.e. achievable) incentive to earn candy, that was not related to how much food they ate. As much as I like the sound of “one piece of candy after dinner, if you’ve eaten a good dinner,” I despise the sound of “did I eat enough for candy yet?” repeatedly throughout said dinner. Eat enough to fill your tummy up. I don’t know how much that is; you do.

So the solution we came to was the same as the one we imposed on Mario Kart when that game entered the house at Christmas: the kids must clean up one area of the house that is at least partially under their control (meaning they are capable of cleaning it and they are probably the ones who made it messy). And then you may ask to play Mario Kart. Or, now, and then you may have a piece of candy. If nothing has been cleaned today, the answer will unequivocally be No.

Behold! It is working. Most days, I end up with a clean kids’ bedroom, a clean “art table area” (the breakfast nook), a clean living room, or a clean playroom, and the kids end up with one piece of candy each. Or, nothing gets cleaned, but no one whines for candy and no one has a sugar attitude from candy. Either way, I’m winning.

The playroom, I admit, is the least-frequently cleaned room. The paradox of the playroom is that we have it precisely so that I can shut the door on the mess and not have to deal with it every single day, but since I don’t deal with it daily, it gets out of hand quickly. Almost all of the toys belong there, so when other rooms get cleaned, toys are tossed onto the playroom floor from elsewhere. And, we have a one year old around, who enjoys dumping out toy bins for the fun of it. With those things on top of the usual, plain old playing in there, I can hardly blame the kids for not choosing to clean the playroom.

But it must be cleaned sometimes, so I’ll assign it as the Candy/Video Game Motivation Room for Today. I usually set a timer, help with one or two jobs, and then walk away. Sometimes I make a checklist for Miryam, who loves checking the boxes as jobs get done, to keep her on task. If they’ve finished by the time the timer goes off–and that means everything is in buckets or on shelves, not shoved into corners–they get their candy and I take the opportunity to vacuum in there. If they’re not finished when the timer goes off, I send them away and Mommy Cleans Up the Rest (which is accompanied by ominous music, because any toys left out at that point may very well end up in the give away pile or the trash, or at minimum, in the toy time-out box for the next month). I have found that giving them more than an hour to attempt the job almost invariably results in the exact same amount cleaned as if I had only given one hour, and much whiny-er, tired-er kiddos. Not worth it.

When they can’t clean it up in an hour or less–I know they are capable of doing it, but they can’t handle it–that’s a good indicator to me that they are overwhelmed by having too many toys. So I help them out for next time by taking some things out of the room for them. I use Mommy Cleans Up the Rest as a chance to switch out toys that have been dumped/scattered but not played with lately, plus toys they failed to clean up within the allotted time; and reintroduce some of the toys that have been in the “off rotation” or “toy time out” boxes since last time. One 20-gallon tote and one canvas toy bucket fit at the top of the playroom closet here, and that seems to be the right amount to have off rotation at a time for us. If it doesn’t all fit in those two boxes, I have to get serious about permanently getting rid of some of the stuff.

It wasn’t always quite so simple for us. Allow me to illustrate what the process looked like when I finally committed to seriously downsizing the number of toys we had about a year ago. As much of a pain as it is when things are so out of hand, the first step is to clean it all up:

So, remember when I said, “I went through the kids’ playroom at least three times,” in this post last year? Before I started, the playroom was to the point that I couldn’t see the floor. No one could walk through it to (1) find what they wanted (so they kept just playing with the toys that were already outside the playroom), or (2) play anything in the playroom (so they just played in the kitchen or living room instead), and (3) not even the mom wanted to set foot in there to supervise an attempt to clean it up.

In order to “go through” the old playroom, I finally made the kids clean up with me. We blasted the latest favorite movie soundtrack and I assigned jobs. “Luke, you do the Train Job. Find all the trains and train tracks and put them in the train bucket. Miryam, you have the Book Job. Put all the books back on the bookshelf.” Other jobs included the Potato Head Job, the Dinosaur Job, the Kitchen Toys Job, Baby Doll Job, Return Pillows and Blankets to Their Beds Job, etc. For my kids, it helped to break down the huge project of “clean the playroom” into smaller, manageable tasks. Even having to decide what to do was just too hard at their ages. I wanted them to be successful at it, so I passed out the tasks. Miryam would finish her assignment and come back to me: “Okay, Mommy, what’s my next job?” Hence, the checklists, now that she can read.

I typically take the Trash Job. There is always traditional trash, like crayon wrappers, rogue snack crumbs, and broken pieces of things, to be found in the playroom. Pro tip: use an opaque container for trash, and go empty it into the big trash can in your house frequently, so the kids don’t notice when you’ve thrown away some “treasure” that’s actually just what I like to call “random sh**.” I’m serious. If they don’t see it, they won’t throw a fit about it. If they happen to bring it up later, you can genuinely say, “I don’t know where that is,” without lying, because you don’t know exactly where in the dump it ended up. I know some parents will find my coldness in this area appalling, and I am sorry for that. I know my own kids best, and I know for a fact that my kids are better off with less stuff, rather than with never having their random “treasures” thrown away. Plus, tiny random items that were meant to be disposable anyway clutter up the floor like nothing else can, and they make it nearly impossible for the kids to do the cleaning up independently, because those things just don’t fit into categories, and there are so freaking many of them. So that job falls under my Trash Job. Tangent! Let’s get back on track!

In the first round, I got rid of things that were actually trash, and I let the kids go through groups of things with me (stuffed animals, cars, etc.) and decide what to keep and what to give away. In the later rounds, once things were already more or less organized, I used my Mom Sense to hone in on what my kids never play with, and what they wouldn’t miss if I discreetly ousted it from the playroom.

In some cases, I had to mentally get out of my own way. I have a tendency to feel an obligation toward the giver—regarding items that were gifted to my kids—that we need to keep it in case someone wants to play with it again sometime, because someone spent money on it, for us. On the surface this seems legit, right? But again, knowing the kids play better for longer with their favorite things, when their not-favorite things are totally out of the way….it’s okay to get rid of gifts. But this is why it takes me more than one pass through the playroom to really get it “gone through.” Sometimes it’s something that I bought for one of them that I hope another of them will love again. No! If no one loves it, get it out!

Part of my Mommy-only task was to go through the boxes of toys that were “off rotation.” Now that we own a manageable amount of toys, I love having the rotation system, taking some things out of the mix for a while, and giving a fresh face to old things when they come back out of rotation.

The problem for me before the big purge was that between birthdays, Christmas, Easter, and generous grandmas who buy stuff for the children outside holidays, too, well, we are almost constantly getting an influx of new toys, so I never needed the off rotation boxes. One box I went through before we moved last fall still had a couple of things in it that never came out into Playland in the two years we lived in that house. No one had missed that stuff, so it got donated.

The train table was a nice item, but we have more trains than fit in the drawers, and my very young kids’ master-planning and fine motor skills are better suited to the vast expanse of the floor. The fancy dollhouse was adorable, and it was Miryam’s favorite thing when she was 3. But now she was 5, and it was no longer a favorite; and the pieces consistently ended up strewn across the house and/or broken; it wasn’t worth fixing again and storing and moving again “just in case” Cecily would also love it in a couple more years when she’ll turn 3. That one was sad to let go of, but it needed to go. I passed it on to a family we know, which made it easier than namelessly dropping it at the local non-profit. The pile of books that had torn pages and flaps that had sat on a shelf for two years, unrepaired, finally got tossed. Clearly we did not miss any of them enough for me to actually fix them.

For me, at least, going through the playroom is much harder than going through my closet. I did a huge closet clean out six years ago before we moved from Texas to Missouri; when my oldest child was under the age of 1 and still nursing; when I thought my next decade or so might be filled with pregnancies and nursing babies, meaning all my cute dresses and skinny jeans and fitted sweaters from college wouldn’t fit me again until I was definitely too old to be wearing them. It’s been pretty easy to keep my closet under control, in the sense of not holding onto things I don’t love or will likely never fit again, since then. The playroom, though—that was a challenge! But after three or four rounds through it, I was able to cut our toy supply almost in half, which means in our new house, we started with nothing “off rotation” and it all fit nicely. Of course, we’ve had Christmas and birthdays since then, so we’re back to having a rotation, but a useful one, now. And with my periodic Mommy Cleans Up the Rest, I’m hoping I won’t need to do a big purge again even as we gear up for little Miss Opinionated to turn 2 this summer.

To summarize, here is my quick list of how to evaluate whether a toy should stay in your playroom (or, more generally, in your house!) or not:
If no one loves it, get rid of it.
If pieces are missing or irreparably broken, such that it’s difficult to play with it in the intended way, get rid of it.
If it’s broken and you don’t want to fix it, get rid of it.
If it causes you particular distress as a parent (something super messy that you hate supervising, or an electronic toy with the absolute worst music, etc.), get rid of it.
If it’s been in its toy bucket, untouched by anyone since the last time you made the effort to clean up the playroom, put it in the “off rotation” box or get rid of it.
If it’s not currently age-appropriate for any of your kids, put it in the “off rotation” box or get rid of it.
If it takes up way more space proportionally to the amount it gets played with or the amount it is loved, maybe get rid of it….This one is particularly useful if you’re cleaning out in preparation for moving, or rearranging furniture or which-kid-sleeps-where among the rooms of your home.
Even if it used to be perfect, if it isn’t serving your children’s imagination or independence or entertainment in some way currently, it’s okay to get rid of it!

Now one last pro tip: make sure you load things from the giveaway pile into the vehicle that will transport them to their given-away location while children are sound asleep or at school or otherwise absolutely not interfering with or noticing what you’re doing. Even if it was something they chose to put in the giveaway pile, or something they haven’t touched or mentioned in months, for some reason seeing it physically leave the house is an avenue straight to Meltdown Town. You have been warned!

Happy purging!