The Best Kind of Christmas Tradition: Getting Rid of Toys!
The typical American child gets toys from their parents, extended family, and close friends every Christmas and Birthday. Did you give your child one, two, or more toys for Christmas last year? Did you give toys to more than one child? What did you give them on their Birthday? Has your child ever received a toy or game from extended family or close friends on those occasions?
Rarely do you purchase your children toys because they need a toy.
You usually purchase toys or games for a holiday or other occasion when you traditionally exchange gifts. Friends and extended family give your children toys and games for the same reasons. The selection of toys we can buy to make a child smile is enormous. We live in a time when most children have more toys then they have interest in playing with.
This holiday season I challenge you to start a new tradition. Take an assessment of how many toys and games your children really need and get rid of the excess before Christmas gets here. I encourage you to look at toys and games objectively. How many toys or games do your children really need to lead happy, well-balanced, emotionally stable lives? Decide on a number. Make this decision before the holiday gets here. Commit to stay within that limit throughout the holiday season.
Another decision you need to make is how big of toys you will get or keep. Toys come in tremendous sizes. They can get large enough to fill an entire room or half the back yard. Children can be happy playing with a toy that consumes one square foot of space just as easily as they can be playing with a toy that consumes 10 square feet. You need to set some boundaries.
Decide the space parameters you are willing to dedicate to the storage of toys, games, and puzzles. Decide the number of toys your children really need. Recognize what a large percentage of your alloted space gets consumed by the large toys.
Don’t buy large toys this Christmas. Instead, get rid of the large toys you currently have. It
will free up a lot of space. Your family will lead a much happier existence if you live within your spacial means.
MacKenzie decided to keep all the toys in the house stored in one room so she could easily monitor how many toys there were and how much of her space was being consumed by toys. She decided on the parameters of her home that she was willing to dedicate to the storage of toys and games. She gathered her children around her and explained to them the need to have limits of how much space the toys consume. She told them what the parameters where. She expressed her desire to get them new toys for Christmas and that she needed their help to decide which toys to donate to goodwill so they could stay within their new parameters after Christmas had come and gone. She let them know the toys they were getting rid of were going to a goodwill facility so a family who couldn’t afford Christmas would still be able to get their children toys.She encouraged them to have the Christmas spirit by giving to others. The children were grateful that they could keep the toys that were the most important to them.
They realized that if they kept their old toys it just meant fewer toys at Christmas.
There were a few instances when MacKenzie was the one who wanted to keep the toys. I gave her a few simple guidelines to help her make better decisions.
The guidelines were as follows:
Only keep the toys and games your children are actively playing with in their current lives. There is a difference between a child holding a toy in his hand and a child actively playing with it. Most toys get touched and moved. It’s the same with all clutter. Don’t keep it because your children have touched or moved it around in the past year. Only keep it if they really play with it as it should be played with.
Do not keep toys, games, or puzzles just because they were a gift from someone. If your children are not actively playing with the toy in their current life it needs to be gotten rid of.
Do not keep toys, games, or puzzles because a child will grow into it. You will acquire a dozen other toys for that child to play with by the time they grow.
Do not keep toys, games, or puzzles because they are like new. New clutter is just as damaging to you as old clutter. Get rid of them.
Give them to Goodwill before Christmas gets here so people who otherwise couldn’t afford them can get them for their children. Deck someone else’s halls with clutter instead of your own.
Do not put toys in storage. It creates the same problem for you as having the toys in your living space. If it doesn’t fit within the parameters of your living space that you have established for the storage of toys and games, get rid of it.
If you keep a toy, game, or puzzle for nostalgia purposes, put it in your child’s memorabilia box. The memorabilia box should have everything you are keeping for memory sake. You could keep one memorabilia box per child. Once their memorabilia box becomes full you have to become selective. You have to get rid of items until you establish a proper fit in the memorabilia box.
Keeping only one memorabilia box per child allows you to maintain a proper fit between your storage space and its contents. Do you really want to store something as big as a toy in it? It may be better to take a picture of it and write a brief journal entry of what that toy meant to them. That way they get to keep the memory without taking up so much space.
Go ahead and buy your children toys this Christmas. It’s all part of the magic. Just get rid of the old toys you have before Christmas gets here. That way your children get the gift of a favorite toy and you get the gift of a clutter-free home. Now is the time to clear out the old to make way for the new.
Merry *Clutter-Free* Christmas!
Rarely do you purchase your children toys because they need a toy.
You usually purchase toys or games for a holiday or other occasion when you traditionally exchange gifts. Friends and extended family give your children toys and games for the same reasons. The selection of toys we can buy to make a child smile is enormous. We live in a time when most children have more toys then they have interest in playing with.
This holiday season I challenge you to start a new tradition. Take an assessment of how many toys and games your children really need and get rid of the excess before Christmas gets here. I encourage you to look at toys and games objectively. How many toys or games do your children really need to lead happy, well-balanced, emotionally stable lives? Decide on a number. Make this decision before the holiday gets here. Commit to stay within that limit throughout the holiday season.
Another decision you need to make is how big of toys you will get or keep. Toys come in tremendous sizes. They can get large enough to fill an entire room or half the back yard. Children can be happy playing with a toy that consumes one square foot of space just as easily as they can be playing with a toy that consumes 10 square feet. You need to set some boundaries.
Decide the space parameters you are willing to dedicate to the storage of toys, games, and puzzles. Decide the number of toys your children really need. Recognize what a large percentage of your alloted space gets consumed by the large toys.
Don’t buy large toys this Christmas. Instead, get rid of the large toys you currently have. It
will free up a lot of space. Your family will lead a much happier existence if you live within your spacial means.
MacKenzie decided to keep all the toys in the house stored in one room so she could easily monitor how many toys there were and how much of her space was being consumed by toys. She decided on the parameters of her home that she was willing to dedicate to the storage of toys and games. She gathered her children around her and explained to them the need to have limits of how much space the toys consume. She told them what the parameters where. She expressed her desire to get them new toys for Christmas and that she needed their help to decide which toys to donate to goodwill so they could stay within their new parameters after Christmas had come and gone. She let them know the toys they were getting rid of were going to a goodwill facility so a family who couldn’t afford Christmas would still be able to get their children toys.She encouraged them to have the Christmas spirit by giving to others. The children were grateful that they could keep the toys that were the most important to them.
They realized that if they kept their old toys it just meant fewer toys at Christmas.
There were a few instances when MacKenzie was the one who wanted to keep the toys. I gave her a few simple guidelines to help her make better decisions.
The guidelines were as follows:
Only keep the toys and games your children are actively playing with in their current lives. There is a difference between a child holding a toy in his hand and a child actively playing with it. Most toys get touched and moved. It’s the same with all clutter. Don’t keep it because your children have touched or moved it around in the past year. Only keep it if they really play with it as it should be played with.
Do not keep toys, games, or puzzles just because they were a gift from someone. If your children are not actively playing with the toy in their current life it needs to be gotten rid of.
Do not keep toys, games, or puzzles because a child will grow into it. You will acquire a dozen other toys for that child to play with by the time they grow.
Do not keep toys, games, or puzzles because they are like new. New clutter is just as damaging to you as old clutter. Get rid of them.
Give them to Goodwill before Christmas gets here so people who otherwise couldn’t afford them can get them for their children. Deck someone else’s halls with clutter instead of your own.
Do not put toys in storage. It creates the same problem for you as having the toys in your living space. If it doesn’t fit within the parameters of your living space that you have established for the storage of toys and games, get rid of it.
If you keep a toy, game, or puzzle for nostalgia purposes, put it in your child’s memorabilia box. The memorabilia box should have everything you are keeping for memory sake. You could keep one memorabilia box per child. Once their memorabilia box becomes full you have to become selective. You have to get rid of items until you establish a proper fit in the memorabilia box.
Keeping only one memorabilia box per child allows you to maintain a proper fit between your storage space and its contents. Do you really want to store something as big as a toy in it? It may be better to take a picture of it and write a brief journal entry of what that toy meant to them. That way they get to keep the memory without taking up so much space.
Go ahead and buy your children toys this Christmas. It’s all part of the magic. Just get rid of the old toys you have before Christmas gets here. That way your children get the gift of a favorite toy and you get the gift of a clutter-free home. Now is the time to clear out the old to make way for the new.
Merry *Clutter-Free* Christmas!
posted by Christi Youd at
9:06 AM
