Less Toys, More Play
The Stats:
Category: Kids Toys
Hours: 6ish
Days on site: 1
Total spent: $0
Items purchased: 0
Have you ever been desperately trying to have some kid-free time on Saturday morning but your child keeps following you around telling you he’s “bored”. And then you wonder why you’d bought an entire room full of toys for them if they’re not even going to play with them? Cool, same.
Well, according to “Simplicity Parenting”, the less toys your child has, the deeper and more independent their play can be.
“As you decrease the quantity of your child’s toys and clutter, you increase their attention and and their capacity for deep play.”
I had personally seen this transformation with my own child, so I was especially excited for this project. When I arrived at the client’s home, this was the basement playroom:
Some of the main problems with the space included the children not being able to clean up on their own (because everything didn’t actually have a home and their were too many items to remember where they all went), many of the toys didn’t function completely because they were missing pieces, and— most importantly— even with an abundance of toys, the kids weren’t spending very much time playing down in the playroom (which meant they were bugging their mother while she was making dinner… or something like that ;) ).
Our main goals were to declutter the unused, unfavored, and annoying toys (because no one wants to be woken up at midnight when a battery-operated toy inexplicably begins to sing/beep/whatthefuckever.) And— spoiler alert— this is how it looked when I left:
The first thing we did was come up with a couple of goals for the room.
The kids would play independently for long periods of time.
The kids would clean up easily and quickly.
To accomplish this, we started by pulling out ALL of the toys, and grouping them with “like” items. We also discussed what were undeniably the most-used and most-loved toys. It’s funny how, without putting much thought into this, we all actually know the top three toys our kids love. So with that as our “joy-sparking” guide, we proceeded to go through each and every toy, and determined if the client wanted to keep them.
If a toy was missing a piece (as determined beforehand when we were sorting through the toys), it automatically got tossed. Almost all of the battery-powered toys were tossed because the client felt strongly that the toys should be inventive, not prescriptive. If the toy can only do one thing, the child become bored with it fairly quickly. But if the toy ignites imaginative play (like building blocks or baby dolls), it typically made the cut. This was a specific desire for this client and will vary from person to person.
In the end, we had a playroom equipped with a reading corner, a baby doll haven, a play kitchen, a trampoline (because A+ for anything that can tire a kid out on a rainy day), and a couple sets of imagination-sparking toys— like match-box cars, wooden blocks, and rubber animals.
Lastly, we tucked a few toys away in the white chest to use as a “toy library” so that the mother could rotate toys as the kids got sick of them. This is a great way to limit your child’s options so she doesn’t get overwhelmed by choice, but also allows you to change things up a bit without buying anything new.
The best part was that when the two children who’s playroom this was came down to see the finished room, they felt like they had MORE toys than when we’d begun. This is because they could see so many of the toys that had been in sight but ignored due to the clutter. Happily, they didn’t ask for any of the toys we’d discarded and they didn’t miss them.