OS for kids: Limiting the quantity of toys.

Avocado

For lots of reasons I decided when my second daughter was born that we are going to have a strictly limited quantity of toys. Shortly after her followed my youngest (also a daughter) and so they will have to share the limited quantity of toys.

I have 2 toyboxes, each about a meter cubed. When they are full that's it. Exceptions have been made for the rocking horse, the wheely ride-along hippo and the jump-a-roo. I don't count the children's books as toys, but the books also have a limited amount of space on my book case. Other than that all toys must fit in the toyboxes and no exceptions!

If the toyboxes are full they need sorting out. Comparative decisions need to be made about if the proposed new toy is better than the toys we already have. Old toys can be thrown away, given away or sold, but not put somewhere else. What doesn't fit in can't stay. And "fit in" means the lid closes all the way flat, with no squashing down required. Teddies from off the beds included. Those boxes must shut.

I have a problem with the way consumer society pushes endless consumption on children and guilt trips parents into conforming and buying ever more things they don't need and their children don't cherish. I go to other peoples houses and see piles of toys buried under more toys and no space for the child to play on the floor and I think what's the point? I read somewhere that a study of British children found they play with less than 10% of their toys more than 90% of the time. I don't find that hard to believe.

Children don't need what we throw at them. All these "educational" toys for babies- I am not buying it- literally. I am just not convinced something with flashing lights and a pre-recorded American voice will teach my children their colours and numbers half so well as the little games we play watching different coloured cars go past us, or unpacking the tins from the weekly shop, or even just doing up buttons on cardies.

I really do feel, deep down, that this modern consume, consume, consume lifestyle is all tosh and I don't want to play along. My sister and I have the same age gap as my two little ones (a year and a few days) and we had about the same quantity of toys I am allowing the babies. I'm not old either, in case you wondered (we were born in '80 and '81). Sister and I never felt hard done by and we prefered playing with each other to just playing with toys only anyway.

The principles of OS living; can you apply them to your kids? Do you? And if you do how do you find it works? Am I the only Mummy of little ones without a T0ys-R-Us storecard? Have you tried to pare the stuff-overload down only for family and friends to have guilt tripped you into overcrowding your lounge again? Or maybe, just maybe, I'm the only one who sees it this way and I ought to be reported to the NSPCC right this instant? I'm really interested to see what the replies I get will be.

Winchelsea

Well done Avocado!

As a granny I totally agree with you. Too much "stuff" is not doing children any favours. Carry on enjoying your creative games - I'm sure the children really enjoy it (I know mine always did!)

Tigsteroonie

If you walked into our house, you would probably describe it as one of those with no space and toys buried under toys buried under toys.

What you wouldn't immediately know is that (1) three quarters of those toys came from charity shops and car boot sales, rather than brand new; and that (2) we are still experimenting with different toys to see which help our son best with his learning, hearing and attention difficulties.

If you did ever visit us, I'd rather you didn't immediately jump to conclusions about us having a "consume consume consume" lifestyle.

tjak

I understand where you are coming from - my son is nearly 8, and we have recently halved the amount of storage units he had for toys. He now has more space to play with the ones he loves.

We found that when he had a birthday party we would come away with one present per child - which when we had a couple of big parties in his first few years at school meant a huge pile of rubbish.

We only buy toys at christmas and birthday times, and these are also limited to a few special presents rather than piles of stuff.

We also don't allow him to watch the commercial childrens TV so he is not subjected to endless adverts for yet more stuff.

But then, I have been called victorian mother by friends before

Better to teach him to value what he has, and that life has a budget.

budgetboo

It's not just toys, it's the various whiteboards and visual aids ds needs that make the place look so cluttered. He has an indoor tramp recc'd by the OT too by the settee. Sadly his bedroom has no toys at all to keep it a low sensory zone to help with his sleep issues so the living room overflows with his toys. Life with asd is not so simple : (

Add to that both mine DS's various crafts and our small flat is constantly in a state of CHAOS. Yet he loves crafty stuff (turning into a good cook too btw) and I think this is healthier for kids in winter than constant tv ads fuelling consumerism we can't afford.

I'm about to spend the next month doing yet another toy declutter to make way for the Xmas gifts - though I have asked for things like ds games & books that take up less space. Why my sister buys gifts like a paddling pool when she knows we live in an inner city flat with no garden I'll never understand:eek: It's "stuff" from other people that breaks the camels back.

I've had to accept that my home pre-kid is a distant dream and that one day in my dotage I may once again have a living room that resembles less than a warzone for longer than the 30 mins before I go to bed at night.

My pet hate is immaculate homes with "status symbol" toys on display that the kids are never actually allowed to play with. One of my neighbours chucked out her 5& 7 years old to play outside from 8.30am - 10pm every night all six weeks of the summer holidays. Her home is always spotless but at what cost to the kids? In my eyes they are neglected.

mrsmortenharket

ummmmm.

My dc is my 3rd child. He has loads, passed from dc1 & 2. And he has loads passed on to him.

He does play with them & I swap them around, so he always has something "new" to play with.

I agree with you in principle though!

Lisa

Pink.

Hi Avocado,

You aren't the only one who feels this way. I tried very hard to discourage lovely kind aunts/uncles/grandparents from over indulging my children and filling my house with toys that I had no room for, but it's not easy to do without hurting feelings.

One way I found around it was to rotate the toys. What I used to do was put toys in plastic crates in the garage and rotate them every week or so. That way they still got to play with them and in fact enjoyed them more because it felt like they had new toys each week. I found they could get overwhelmed by too many toys and only play with the ones at the top of the boxes if I kept them all in their rooms. But maybe that's because I'm a bad mummy who always insisted that they helped clear up any mess they made.

Once they'd grown out of the toys (which because of the rotation) were still in good order, I would send them to the charity shop so that other children could enjoy them too.

I certainly found as babies, my three would get just as much fun out of a cardboard box or a wooden spoon and a saucepan as many of their purpose built toys.

As this is more related to family moneysaving rather than Old Style, I'll move it over to the MoneySaving in Marriages, Relationships & Families board once you've had some more input from the Old Stylers.

Pink

Aarons_mummy

I agree with some of what you say, I also believe we are in a consumer society but at the same time, children are educated through play aren't they and with that comes various toys. My son has 4 plastic storage boxes with toys in each has different items, ie one has the larger ELC stuff such as pirate ship, rocket etc, a box of megabloks etc. On top of that he has a kitchen, toy garage and train set out to play with whenever he likes along with a small unit thing that has odds and ends such as toy cars, his tea set, people to go along with the ELC toys etc. I only buy for my son at Christmas and Birthdays so I don't feel bad buying a little extra and of course I never buy anything full price, all toys are bought in sales.

I do agree that children get far too much however and I am ashamed to admit that my son's 2nd Christmas I went all out and he had tons, however I learned my lesson and we have a good balance of toys now.

I don't count books, puzzles and art materials as toys either so those are all separate.

Lizbetty

I hate the whole 'I want I want!' thing that some parents seem to feel pressured into backing down to. Luckily, my two aren't usually bothered about the latest toys so much and are happy pittling around with paper and pens. My 4 year old is a cellotape queen. But the xmas ads came on and they have asked for EVERYTHING. I mean that. They surprised me this year with how the toy ads have affected them (they're 4 and 6). But they won't get everything! And they know why, I've explained to them that we can't afford it and they won't play with 99% of the stuff they're asking for anyway.

We have a couple of boxes of plastic animals and various oddments, but a lot of the expensive stuff we/our parents succumbed to buying them in the past has bitten the dust. A lot of it ends up broken as my two girls are quite boisterous :shocked: They don't make stuff like they used to! Plus we have dogs, they play with them a lot too.

I agree with the sentiment about not feeling we have to buy them so much unnecessary expensive plastic nonsense. We have some soft toys in the loft that we rotate, and it's like christmas when we get ones down they'd forgotten about!

I have friends who buy their kids loads. I mean LOADS :eek: And the kids never seem content with what they have. And they actually brag to their friends about the stuff they have, which I'm amazed at! At 6 it seems a bit worrying. I think most kids benefit from boredom as it makes them get imaginative. Toys nowadays do it all for them! Our bath toy box is full of straws and old empty plastic bottles, the rest of the bath toys have ended up growing mould or haven't been played with.

I understand that it's not so straight forward if your kids do have attention difficulties or such issues that might mean finding the right stimulation is tough, and also really important.

And at the end of the day, it is down to personal choice for everyone, so it's nobody else's business if you choose to buy your child the contents of Argos, even! I have no doubt that the OP wasn't intending to judge anyone else's method of parenting at all.

But I totally get where the OP is coming from. It's not about not having toys at all. The pressure to get into debt for the sake of allegedly 'making the kids happy' by buying them stuff is huge. It's tough to avoid that pressure.

Lizbetty

I saw this on a friend's facebook page and it really does make you think!

Rebob

I found the easiest way to deal with Grandma who wanted to keep buying my ds "stuff". I asked her not to buy more as we did not have space for it but this did not work so I started to send something for her house out of his toys each time she bought something. She complained a lot but it got through in the end.:D

The buying tons extends to the teen years. My son has noticed that he doesn't get a lot of what his friends at school and scouts get. I just say its up to him but if he wants to stop going to scouts and all the camps he can have the iphone or whatever they have at the time.