I try to only buy multi-use toys, and purge every once in a while, (with my kids help).

The kids are not allowed to have toys from Fast food places that we occasionally eat from – we have talked a lot about junky toys that only end up in land fill.

I have found that my 7 and 9 year old really need a place of their own where they can display their “treasures”.

They both have amazing imaginations, and make lots of little crafty things that can look like junky clutter, but are precious to them. They each have a shelf to display this stuff on, in their room – every so often I say, “are you ready to let this go?” and they are usually happy to get rid of something to make more room on the shelf for something else.

I think there is a happy balance when it comes to kids “clutter” – you have to make spaces in your home that they have some say over (in our house this is in their room).

We don’t have a playroom and all the toys live in our family room. This limits the amount we can store. We also purge 2x a year – right before birthdays to make room for new toys and right before Christmas & Hanukkah.

We’re also BIG on purging. We (with her) go through every piece of every toy bin about twice each year – before Christmas and birthday – and it’s well worth the effort. She’s a great “giver-awayer!”

Also, take a book out of the Montessori pedagogic, and keep kids entertained with learning real skills such as pouring water, cutting veggies, sweeping the floor.

The responsibility lies with the parents not to buy their children so many toys they’re swimming in them in the first place. Buying a child toys and then expecting them to calmly, or even happily, give them away is unrealistic.

Note all the suggestions above about each toy Having A Place. In some preschools, they put a picture of the toy on its spot on the shelf, so when it’s time to put the red car away, you look for the picture of the red car. Things like Legos, toy soldiers, etc go in labeled bins. The bins with the hinged attached lids are particularly good.

I’ve found it helpful to have a designated table where toy soldiers, train layouts, Lego sculptures, etc, can be left out.

The family room is where most of our toys are. We have baskets, about three large and two small, and the children know where all the toys go, so when it’s pick up time (before nap and before bed) it’s easy for them to scoop and drop. In between nap and bed, I honestly don’t worry about toys being scattered. Bedrooms don’t have toys, just stuffed animals, clothes and books for bedtime. We’ve found the kids go to bed better if they aren’t distracted by toys up there.

Honestly, I’d rather have a happy home than a perfectly tidy one. My mom was so focused on keeping clutter–which she defined as anything as small as a book left on a coffee table–to a minimum, that my friends, when they came over, would ask “is your house always this….uh, clean?” It wasn’t a compliment. Our house was cold and sterile; my future husband, when he first saw my parents’ house, said it was like a museum.

I had a very unhappy childhood. My mom would regularly “raid’ my bedroom and throw the “clutter” around in a frenzy, yelling all the time. It makes me sad when I hear about parents bemoaning the toys and clutter, as if the children and their toys are such a burden to their uncluttered lifestyle. There will come a day when the kids are gone, and the house will be as clean and perfect as you like. I keep the kitchen clean and tidy (“as the kitchen goes, so does the house” is a rule I live by and it seems to be true), and keep up on the laundry and bathrooms, but toys? Unless they’re in the way of traffic, I don’t worry too much. We try to keep a happy medium–a house we can all live in comfortably, but which looks lived in. Our family room looks like a playroom, yes, because we have KIDS. We chose to have kids, and with kids come toys and a bit of chaos. Embrace it, find a system to help you live with it without stressing about every stray Lego, teach kids to pick up after themselves without nagging or yelling at them, and you’ll be a lot happier.

Having a pet also teaches a child to clean up. After my cat ate half my Barbie shoes, I was a lot more careful that every little piece was put away.

That being said … you won’t ever see my parenting status change in my bio. This isn’t a mommy blog (I really like mommy blogs, we just aren’t one) and I won’t talk about my children on here. We have a rule, only guest authors and male staffers can reference their individual kids. If Teri or I talk about children, it is in the general sense. We do this because the majority of our readership is male and/or childless, and other websites (like Parenthacks) service the mommy market specifically.

HOWEVER, I do talk about personal parenting issues on RealSimple.com from time-to-time. Since Real Simple is a woman’s magazine and their readership has more children as an overall percentage, it works well with their format.

Matt, I totally agree. I’ve had close calls with all four of my kids, who despite my valiant efforts towards cleanliness have all managed to find choking hazards, and I’ve often wondered how they would even have survived if I wasn’t as neat as I am. lol

Life with child and clutter was a stress. Life with child and no clutter is a joy.

Unfortunately, I know that I was pretty untidy before I had kids, and if I think about other families around me, then actually they run the whole gamut from clinically minimal to cereal up the wall. In the end, I think it’s more about personalities and systems.

Our 2 year old knows that when we sing that song, it’s time to start cleaning up. She sings along and actually puts stuff away. Certainly not perfect every time, but gets the job done most the time. Lots of praise along with making it fun seems to help.

Some things that have worked for us (through trial and error):

(1) To save money and keep from being overrun with books and DVDs, we check out lots of books and DVDs from the library. At any given time, we have 60 to 100 books and 2 to 10 DVDs from the library. While this may seem like a lot, the items fit on one shelf. Online renewals and account viewing help us keep the items for as long as possible and return them on time.

(2) Buy compatible items, if possible. For example, we own lots of Legos. We keep some specialized sets separate, but, for the most part, we mix them all together in a huge box. While there are lots of Legos, picking them up is easy because there is often very little sorting that needs to be done. Many go in the same box.

Along the same lines, if your kids like trains, stick to one set. For example, at Target, the Thomas the Tank Engine series comes in 3 different sets, all by the same company. One is plastic, another wooden, and the third metal. The tracks and accessories for each set are incompatible with the ones from the other sets. Our kids have one large train set only because their trains, tracks, etc. all belong to one set that fits together. It is more fun for them to have one large set than several small ones.

(3) If our kids are given a toy that we do not like or do not want to fool with on a daily basis, for whatever reason, we simply tell our kids immediately (and excitedly) that these toys are outdoor toys that will be fun to play with outdoors. Then, we put the toys on the screened porch in boxes on shelves. The kids have never asked to play with these toys indoors. They have sometimes played with these toys outdoors, but, typically, these toys are forgotten.

(4) Some toys (bulky, large metal trucks, like Tonka trucks; or toys to be thrown, like Frisbees) are clearly outdoor toys and never come in the house.