Easy Steps To Declutter A Home Full Of Toys Before The Holidays

If you have a house full of kids, then you know just what an exciting time the holidays are. Everyone is on their best behavior as Santa finalizes his list, and the letters with their toy requests have been shipped off to the North Pole. But as a parent, a small part of you winces knowing that an influx of toys is about to hit your house. It'll just add on to the mountain of plastic they already have, which is always difficult to keep tidy. Now add a minimum of four new toys per child, and you're guaranteed to be constantly battling clutter. However, it doesn't have to be that way. 

In order to prevent your home from being overrun by kids toys, you can declutter your unused, broken, or forgotten items before the holidays. This will remove a good chunk of the clutter from bedrooms, playrooms, and the living room, while making room for new items your kids will likely appreciate and be entertained by more. But how do you exactly do that? It's simple — just get rid of anything broken or no longer played with.

You don't have to haul out half of the playroom's contents in order to declutter kids' toys. Focusing on removing anything broken or unused will make a big difference in how the space looks. So what are the qualifications for those criteria? For broken toys, see if any items are cracked, can no longer power on, or have important pieces missing. For example, does a puzzle have eight missing pieces and is no longer fun to put together? Or has a sorting toy lost all of its blocks? Toss it into the trash. However, for unused items, focus on items that your children haven't played with all year. This might include toys that they have since outgrown and are no longer interested in, or items they never really enjoyed and have been gathering dust ever since you brought them home. 

But here's the hard part — how do you get these items out of your house without your kids having a meltdown? Instead of sneaking them out behind their backs, do the opposite. Invite your kids to help with the pruning process. It will get the whole family involved in decluttering. Explain to them why it's necessary, and make a game out of it. Tell them the goal is to find 10 broken toys, and challenge them to see who can do so the fastest. Or turn it into a hunting game and ask them to locate five toys they no longer like or play with. This gives them the control, making the process much more pleasant.