Do you ever get so fed up with all the toys lying around? This is the inside story of my drastic decision to take my kids’ toys away.
As some of you already know, I’ve been on a mission this year to simplify my family’s life and rid ourselves of excess. Over the course of the past nine months I have probably given away about 75 percent of my girls’ toys, keeping only the items that I felt encouraged their imagination and that they actually played with. I thought I was doing pretty good.
Even so, there were warning signs that my kids still had too much stuff. In June, we took a field trip to Reptile World in Orlando. Afterwards we decided it would be fun to take the girls to dinner at a dinosaur-themed restaurant called T-Rex in Downtown Disney. While we were waiting to be seated my oldest daughter Maggie spotted the Build-a-Dino Workshop in the gift shop and although we immediately said “no way,” from that moment on she could think of nothing else.
All through our delicious dinner, surrounded by dramatic (fake) meteor showers and animatronic dinosaurs, she fixated on the one thing she couldn’t have rather than the cool sights we were actually experiencing.
On the three hour drive home, Husband and I–seriously concerned by our daughter’s inability to enjoy the moment–made a point to talk about all the neat stuff we had seen, what our favorite reptiles were, and how funny Trouble had been holding the snake. By the time we made it home the Build-a-Dino had been forgotten. At least by her. But we were worried.
In the weeks that followed, Chuck and I talked a lot about how we were going to handle this lack of contentment we were noticing. Then one morning near the end of July, after telling my kids to clean their room for the umpteenth time, I made the somewhat impulsive–albeit pre-warned–decision to take away ALL their stuff.
Just 2 days earlier I had spent half the day cleaning their room & re-organizing their toys and closet, which is something I do fairly regularly. I wasn’t asking them to clean some giant out-of-control mess, just to pick up a few items off the floor and put them away in the very clearly labeled baskets. Every time I came back to check on them, they had not only NOT picked up, they had made an even bigger mess.
I finally gave up and took it all away. I wasn’t angry, just fed up. I calmly began packing up not just a toy or two, but every single thing. All their dress-up clothes, baby dolls, Polly Pockets, & stuffed animals, all their Barbies, building blocks, and toy trains, right down to the the furniture from their dollhouse and play food from their kitchen. I even took the pretty Pottery Barn Kids comforter from their bed. The girls watched me in stunned silence for a few minutes and then, when the shock wore off, they helped. And just like that, their room was clear.
I had no idea what a dramatic difference this one semi-impulsive decision would make in all our lives. I first started noticing a real change about 4 weeks later when we took a family trip to Key West.
In contrast to our last outing and for the first time ever, neither girl asked us to buy a single thing the entire weekend. Not a toy, not a cheesy souvenir, not a light-up necklace from a passing street vendor. Nothing. We passed hundreds of shops and they loved looking in the window, but they were content just to be. What was most amazing to me was that we didn’t talk to them about it ahead of time. Not once did we have to tell them not to ask, or explain that being together was what mattered.
Had I not experienced it with my own eyes, I would’ve never believed that an addiction to stuff could be broken that quickly. The truth is that when I took all their stuff away, I was terrified at what would happen. I worried that I was scarring them for life, depriving them of some essential developmental need, taking away their ability to self-entertain.
In reality, the opposite has happened. Instead of being bored, they seem to have no shortage of things to do. Their attention span is much longer and they are able to mindfully focus on their task at hand. They color or read for hours at a time and happily spend the entire afternoon playing hide & seek or pretend.
They are far more content, able to appreciate the blessings that they do have, and able to truly enjoy the moment they are in without always having to move on to the next thing. They are more creative and patient, more willing to share, far more empathetic towards the plight of others, and, with little to fight over, they hardly fight at all.
When I do take down a toy for them to play with (no, I didn’t throw everything away), such as their Lego blocks or dress-up clothes or or their kitchen food & dishes, that one thing will entertain them for the entire day. (The rest has more or less been forgotten and will soon make it’s way from the attic to the Goodwill pile.)
What I love even more is that they are able to recognize excess on their own. Aside from a favorite stuffed animal and the comforter on their bed, (which they both earned back), neither of them actually want their toys back on a permanent basis. They like not being overwhelmed by stuff and not having to spend so much time cleaning their room. In fact, later that very same day, as we drove to gymnastics class, Maggie said it’s okay that we don’t have any more toys Mommy. We can just read and use our imaginations. And now we won’t have to clean up every day. She understood before I did that more stuff doesn’t make us happier.
When I first became a mom I was so happy to have a chance to start over, to undo through my children all the wrong that was done to me, to give them everything I felt I had missed out on. I wanted our lives to be perfect, and my vision of perfection included a perfectly decorated bedroom filled with beautiful things, a life where they would want for nothing.
I equated giving them stuff with making them happy, a message that our consumer driven culture hammers into our psyches from the time we our born. Oh, what a lie!
I started this blog because I am a shopaholic, and there are so many times where I buy things when I am bored or unhappy, just to fill the void. My husband laughs at me (and sometimes throws up his hand in frustration) because although I talk a good game about wanting to downsize and get rid of stuff, in reality there are still many times where I just can’t help myself from buying more.
I justify it, telling myself it was on sale or a really good deal, or something we really needed, or that I deserve it because I work so hard. In reality it is just another thing I am trying to buy to solve a problem that runs much deeper.
Stuff isn’t evil in and of itself, but in a world where we are constantly told that what we have isn’t quite good enough, the love of things can so very easily consume us. It is the pursuit of it all–more toys, cuter clothes, a prettier house, a nicer car, a bigger computer, a fancier phone–that makes us forget all the things that actually matter.
It wasn’t until after observing first hand the real and immediate changes in my children after taking their toys away that I truly began to understand. And now instead of me teaching them, they have taught me the lesson I wish I would’ve have learned a long time ago.
For our family, there’s no turning back.
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I do understand your main goal of trying to have your children appreciate life's gifts, however, you created somewhat of a toxic environment by punishing your child when she asked you for something. I know that kids can be very needy, but she may grow up not feeling comfortable to ask you other questions/requests--be it for toys or clothes or for advice or for school.
"My kid wanted something. So I threw her toys away. Now she doesn't ask me for much anymore, isn't that an awesome change?"
Well, you know, if your response to getting her a toy was to not get it AND throw her only actual possessions out, I'm sure she thought "wow. not asking anything from her". It's actually very sad that your own kid can't ask just 1 toy of you. You sound incredibly selfish; you shouldn't of had children if THIS is how you react to getting your kids toys of all things. your kid's room looks like something I'd see in a catalog, not a kids room. Which is a bad thing, because a child's room should look like a child lives there!
Get her the dinosaur toy. seriously. Let your three and six year olds be three and six year olds! You taught them at sickeningly young ages that they own nothing until they are out of the house!
I just want to add on to this post that a close friend had their toys taken away frequently as a child and are now obsessed with the curation of things to the point where I feel it is debilitating to their real life.
Where as I was a kid who lived in toy clutter and grew up content to save money over spending it on material goods.
I would think very hard about your children's experiences and perceptions of reality, kids are very impressionable and I know for a fact there were many times growing up where I was expected to appreciate scenery or things I just did not care about because it had no significant meaning for me, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate those things now. Expecting your children to be able to appreciate things you do, or to be more mature than they should be is incredibly insensitive as well as unrealistic.
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A good way to do this is to have your child do it with you. Tell them you're going to clean the room, and that they're going to help. While you are cleaning, ask them what is sentimental to them, and try to only keep toys that stimulate their imagination. Toys that are never played with, obviously, should be sent to goodwill (or thrown out if broken). Something fun that you could do as well is during Christmas time go to the Angel Tree Charity (I believe American Cross are the ones who set this up) and your child can pick someone to give a present to, you could have him/her write a nice, encouraging letter, and they can pick out clothes and or toys for the chosen person.
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When my daughter was five her father threatened to clean out her room with a trash bag and get rid of all of her stuff. She said good and started tossing out things into the hallway saying "I don't want this anymore. I don't want that anymore." Later she happily told me "Mom, my room is really clean!" We had inadvertently been loading her down with our love of things. She is sixteen now, keeps a clean bedroom with a limited amount of stuff, and is a very thoughtful shopper.
just happened on your blog via pinterest, and saw this as a post off to the side. I just want to say thank you. It takes courage to do something like this in the face of such pressure to be materialistically acquisitive. We acquire things instead of memories, and even worse an expectation that we should/will always be acquiring 'stuff" I found so much of my thoughts echoed here. I, too, talk about the anxiety of things and how I want to downsize while continuing to acquire more. We have an eleven-month-old and she has kept us more in line with acquiring less. I think doing a Montessori style bedroom helps as well because there is a lot of focus on imagination/creativity vs constant stimulation from external objects. Again, Thank you for wanting to send humble, well adjusted and appreciative young women into the world. May the positive comments you receive on this topic outweigh the negative.
I just want you to know that I've been considering this for a long time and your post has given me the courage to take the plunge. I am aghast that you would get such negative feedback!? Your results after just a few weeks proves what a genius idea this is. I love that you have kept things like puzzles, crayons, etc. It's exactly what I plan to do! Not to mention get rid of all of my junk that's holding me back. Thank you, sooooo much, for having the guts to follow through and let us know about it.
Best!
Sorry, no. This is the action of a narcissist who does not care about the impact of her actions on her children. I know because my mother did the same thing to me. Took all my toys away without any care of the impact on me. It was all about her and what she wanted. That and other things lead to a huge gap between us. This is emotional abuse. If you don't believe me check out the "Raised by Narcissists" threads on Reddit. You will see lots of people who feel they have to hide things from their parents because their individual person was not respected.
Let me tell you what will happen when these kids are teenagers. They will have learned to tell the narcissist mother what she wants to hear to avoid punishment, and then they will do what they want. They will become dishonest with her and will hide things from her. Not necessarily bad things, but she will not be part of their lives. That will continue into adulthood. Maybe this mother will do what my mother did when I was a teen (honor student, tops in the class, but wouldn't talk to her), and search through her rooms to find her diary and then read it and punish the child for her feelings. This mother needs to learn boundaries and respect.
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I loved this posting! I am a preschool teacher, and if it were up to me I'd take 90% of the toys the kids play with at school away and focus them on art, imagination, and social activities! I Good for you for teaching your children early on in life that toys and things generally tend to create stress, clutter and chaos, while family, friends, creativity, and an orderly environment foster independence, appreciation, and tranquility. Removing toys from your children's life also gives you the opportunity as a parent to really connect on a deep and meaningful level with your child(ren). Children love their parents and want to be just like them, especially in the early years, so take advantage of the time away from the toys your child now has and focus that time on SPENDING time and attention on them. Have them do simple chores with you, teach them how to make something, go to the library and pick out books to read together, or just play together in the backyard and see where both of your imaginations lead you. They won't be little very long; relish in this time when they are curious and you are still their greatest inspiration and teacher. Be the influence. :)