the simple life | toys

Continuing my series of posts on living simply, I will explore a difficult topic: your children’s toys.

It has seemed as if one of the hardest things to simplify in my family’s life has been the quantity & quality of our children’s toys. I have two young girls and they seem to be constantly getting things from everywhere:

• family {grandmothers}
• friends
• holidays
• activities {school, church, b-day parties, etc.)

It seems that between the above sources, as well as random other ones my kids are always bringing something home, usually of the plastic & cheap variety. First off this simply creates an environment where they expect to receive something from everyone & everything they do. Whoever decided to start giving out presents to the kids that show up to someone else’s party should be punished. Just because you have a bunch of snotty selfish kids show up, you shouldn’t feel compelled to feed the fire anymore.

Secondly, and more to the point of where this is going, it causes our house to be filled with all kids of rubbish. The problem I’ve encountered, when dealing with women in general they are overly sentimental over the junk they receive. “Aunt Suzie-Jane, may she rest in peace, gave that to me. I can’t just get rid of it…,” is usually what I hear.

The unseen problem is that when this collection of toys (which they play with once and forget about) creates a large amount of clutter in the child’s room, to the point where they don’t want to even play in the room because of the chaos. Regularly I have been going into my older daughter’s room (she’s still young enough for this to work) and just simply clean house. I go through her shelves and trash on junk that has accumulated. I leave the quality toys and take the old things to the local resale shop.

I don’t tell her exactly what I did or the things I got rid of but simply that I cleaned her room. She loves me for it. It becomes a new place of imagination for her again. Taking the clutter away gives her a new opportunity to create and explore.

With our younger daughter, she doesn’t have a room to herself, she shares one with us. Her toys are placed in a central place in the living room. This necessarily has caused us to little the amount that would necessarily accumulate otherwise. It seems to be a wonderful way to cause creativity to be bred into the nature of a child from early on. She has never really had many noisy flashy toys, but mostly a collection of stuff from around the house that she has inherited as her own. Things like the basket with dog leashes in it will become a regular item of entertainment for extended periods of time.

I’m pretty sure that this has been the helpful release of an unjust burden we have put on our children rather than any cruel act of restriction. I’m definitely not of the camp to simply give my children everything they ask for. There has to be restraint for their own good and their proper maturation. I am always in a process of doing this in my own life so it seems right that I would help my children do the same.