The KonMarie method

weesmiler

iQueen wrote: »

MK hasn't got children, from what I have read, but she would definitely say discard the excess!

My oldest two DCs were born in the late 1960s, before Consumerism reared it's very ugly head. The amount of toys they had would probably be viewed as 'deprivation' today!

I'm sorry for children today. They are faced with so many choices today (no wonder there's an epidemic of ADHD) - it's worse than the supermarket bread aisle!

It doesn't help that 'good parenting' has been allied to providing material products, instead of our time. Our time is the greatest gift we can give our children, after love.

Well said!

iQueen

PenniesMake£s wrote: »

I totally agree yet at the same time fall for the consumerism marketing ploys, my house is like a shrine to Disney frozen ( almost:rotfl:) what do you remember your children playing with?

I refused to buy toys that needed the maintenance of batteries or toys that had only a single function e.g Penny Puppywalker.

The sort of things were:

- Lego (of course. No Duplo) half filling a lidded plastic nappie pail, which I still have;
- Matchbox/Corgi cars - still got them in a large biscuit tin;
- homemade playdoh, crayons, glue, pencils, felt-tips, drawing and painting books, plasticine, general art and craft materials: sewing, knitting, etc
- about a dozen playpeople (no 'accessories')
- a dolls' house;
- a few soft toys: about 6 each;
- 'educational' toys: tessellating flat wooden coloured shapes, assorted shaped building blocks, wooden train set, Early Learning toys, construction kits, model-making materials;
- jigsaws, other age-appropriate puzzles;
- books: story books, Ladybird, novels, dictionaries, encyclopaedia, non-fiction: hobbies, natural history,
- games: Junior Scrabble, Monopoly, dominoes, chess, draughts, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, Snap, Happy Families, adult playing cards, Top Trumps, marbles, etc.
- the inevitable dolls (Barbie and Action Man) + small, cheap accessory packs... no castles etc. (I gave my oldest daughter Bride Barbie for her 40th birthday!)
- toy cooking equipment, tools, water pistols (no guns)
- a trike, and s/hand bikes, roller skates, according to age.
- footballs, tennis, badminton stuff for the garden (no team strips).

My son asked for a microscope for his 8th birthday - I've still got it, fascinating.

This is a general idea of the categories that I can remember. Obviously, they accumulated over the years, at birthdays and Christmas, and many were amusing them into adulthood. Small toys at other times were rare treats.

Unfortunately, my three younger children born in the 1980s, got more sophisticated presents, from other people, but they would have been fine with the same stuff that their brother and sister had had!

Most of their activities involved them doing something creative, playing with others, or outside. They watched Children's TV at tea-time.

I was a SAHM until they were all 18, so we did a lot of stuff together - housework (sort of), cooking, painting the bathroom (pre-school :eek:), picnics in the park, camp-fire fry-ups in the garden, train trips, gardening, attending meetings and conferences, Sun Holidays, weekly shopping, occasionally a proper lunch in a cheap cafe, (to keep their table manners up to scratch!) etc

Yes, I was a hippie Earth Mother - best time of my life!

PenniesMake£s

That was a lovely post iQueen, the list is very helpful as a guide too, thanks xx

iQueen

PenniesMake£s wrote: »

That was a lovely post iQueen, the list is very helpful as a guide too, thanks xx

Very Old Style, but I'm glad you found it helpful.

You may be interested to know that, I hoped that my children would get jobs that made them happy and provided enough for them to modestly support their future families/lives.

My oldest son is a professor, my oldest daughter Head of Finance in a Ftse 100 company, my middle daughter a trainee Occupational Therapist, my younger son has his own business hand-making garden furniture (he abandoned an engineering PhD in the third year!) and my youngest daughter got First Class degree in Quantity Surveying.

I cannot say whether their toys played a part in their success, but having qualified as a secondary teacher when the last one left home (I was 59), I like to think that the toys nurtured their imaginations and encouraged them to reach for the stars.

TiredTrophy

We have six children, all grown up now. All puzzles and games lived in a cupboard by the big table.....supervised and put away after use. The older ones played with the younger sometimes and they all still put the games away carefully. They are now all boxed in storage as we are abroad and they all have tiny homes and no children yet.
Lego is a mission.....an OCD child who insists on making the sets back up keeps it tidy but stifles creativity. ...so we had some sets and some general....the sets were made up on a table then played with.
General toys like wooden bricks, toy cars, wooden trains were often set up and played over a long period as a 'wide' game, a bit like a multiplayer on line game is! Even into their early teens!! So I just asked the children to make sure the set up allowed them to get to bed and the bathroom.
when we moved to a smaller house it was more difficult....and i had to insist on no toys on the stairs.
Tidying all the toys everyday would have stopped me from doing the things i wanted and spoilt their games.....however, i think the six of them had few types of toy than two or three siblings would have now and i had time to supervise the things that needed to be put away, such as sewing and playdough, jigsaws and paint.
It is a brilliant ruse to rotate toys and helps to pinpoint when they are broken or inappropriate ( too frustrating for example) and a special box for sick children with a few younger age group toys also for those really awful days. A magic painting book was good ( can you can still get them?)
Good luck and I hope you and your children find an appropriate way.....do ask them what they think.....while they play in the bath or you are out for walk.....

iQueen

Aaaaaagh! I forgot all the bath-time toys! What a PITA! :rotfl:

Igamogam

iQueen wrote: »

Aaaaaagh! I forgot all the bath-time toys! What a PITA! :rotfl:

When my DDs were little in the 90's/noughties there was a trend for oranges to be sold in plastic mesh bags with handles on - perfect for scooping up the toys and hanging on a hook on wall at none tap end of bath ( or you could hang over taps I guess) Lot cheaper than buying purpose made bags from M'Care!!:money::D

clippy_girl

Can I ask what people do with bookcases once they get rid of the books? I dont want to get rid of the bookcase as I have alcoves on either side of the fireplace in the living room and the bookcase is in one and to unit in the other. Room will look empty and mismatched without it. Also I have some nice souvenirs from hols that I display I'm front of the books but think it will be too bare without the books!

iQueen

Igamogam wrote: »

When my DDs were little in the 90's/noughties there was a trend for oranges to be sold in plastic mesh bags with handles on - perfect for scooping up the toys and hanging on a hook on wall at none tap end of bath ( or you could hang over taps I guess) Lot cheaper than buying purpose made bags from M'Care!!:money::D

I don't know what was worse: a dozen water-filled plastic toys cluttering the bath/bathroom floor/washbasin, or the M'care net full (yes, we had one in the 80s) cluttering the taps!

BTW, I found a paddle from Eagle Eyes Action Man's life-raft recently, while kondoing! :rotfl:

EE had a home-made parachute too, for regularly jumping from the bedroom window! Bless!

I was just glad when the children were too old for them, but...
that was when they began sloshing water over the sides and leaving damp patches on the living-room ceiling!

GreyQueen

clippy_girl wrote: »

Can I ask what people do with bookcases once they get rid of the books? I dont want to get rid of the bookcase as I have alcoves on either side of the fireplace in the living room and the bookcase is in one and to unit in the other. Room will look empty and mismatched without it. Also I have some nice souvenirs from hols that I display I'm front of the books but think it will be too bare without the books!

You could go all Japanese and treat them like the tokonoma (alcoves) in traditional Japanese homes.

The idea issn't that you have a perma-display of objects such as ornaments, photos etc, but that you carefully selected items from your supplies and displayed them sparsely. An example would be a scroll painting, a simple vase with a spray of seasonal flowers.

You could perhaps think about giving pride of place to treasured possessons and rotating them in and out of display, to keep them fresh and lively in you mind, and let treasures take a turn in the limelight. HTH.

Here's a linkie; http://japansheartandculture.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/tokonoma.html