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Hi everyone, Melissa here at CloudMom. I read such a funny piece on the blog, Rookie Moms,
about how not hoarding toys is the way to go. Less mess, less stress. I am so on board
with this. I tend to be a complete neat freak, and the notion that my kid's toys could be
all mixed up and in the wrong boxes and in the wrong place is enough to drive me literally
crazy and keep me up at night, so I try to eliminate stuff, and I actually have less
toys now with five kids than I had earlier with two kids. Anyway, so I thought about
this, I wrote down two things I think you can do if you wanna get rid of toys in your
house. And the first one is really just to take inventory and keep track of what your
kids are using and not using, and of how much they need. If your kids are into Legos, they
probably don't need 3,000 Lego pieces; they can probably get by on just a few 100. They
probably don't need 25 wheels, eight or ten would probably be fine. The second thing I
think is a nice thing to do, and I've tried this, is to enlist your kids in the whole
decision, take a few toys aside and say, "Listen, you really haven't used this in a really long
time. Why don't we give it to somebody who doesn't have a lot of toys?" And see what
they say. They might just say yes, and what a nice opportunity to go to your church or
a day care center and have your child be the one to give that toy away. I think this is
a really good thing. Now, if this doesn't work, and your child is dead set on keeping
something, and it's in full view, but he's not using it, I would just kind of do the
old rotate. Put it away, put it in a different closet, and then later on, six months down
the line, bring it out again, and it will seem like new. It's like Christmas in July.
So, those are just a few thoughts on how to deal with toys. Obviously, we're very lucky
to even be having this conversation. Let me know what you think of what you do when it
comes to dealing with toys and mess generally in your house by commenting on my blog on
CloudMom or you can also tweet me @CloudMom on Twitter, and thank you so much for watching.