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.
The Breaking Point
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.
Why I Took My Kids’ Toys Away (& Why They Won’t Get Them Back)
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.
The Paradigm Shift
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.
So…what happened??
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.
No turning back
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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Ruth Soukup
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Hi, Ruth! I just found your blog and think you’re simply wonderful! I really appreciate your sense of humor about raising kids 🙂 I have an 18 month old little boy, and he’s an angel, but I’ve gotten sucked into buying him a new toy at least once a week – and it’s getting ridiculous! He’s the only grandchild on both sides, so he gets spoiled by everyone in the family. I have decided from this day forward that we’re going to do a purge of his toy box and donate all the things he doesn’t need/play with/even know he has. I have gone through tons of your posts (I especially like the parenting ones since I’m learning how to be the mother of a toddler!) and will be checking back regularly! Thanks for posting!!!
Ruth, I just came across this page in messy room frustration. Immediately after reading this blog, I went in to my girls room, sat down and said “I know you don’t want to clean your room and I think it’s because you just have to much stuff and you don’t know where to start. How about we put most of your toys in bins and take them to the attic. Once a month we’ll switch it out.” I had my mouth half open and ready to start convincing them when they both shot up and said “OKAY!” Took out a bin from their closet and started dumping toys in. The oldest even said she would like to move the books from the bookcase and get rid of the bookcase altogether to have more room!!! My kids left me speechless! I am a very happy mom. Thank you!
Small update: the room cleanup is complete! I am in shock and in awe of my girls, 6 & 8. I have never in my life seen them move as fast as they did today. You would think we were going to Disney World. They filled 7, yes 7 bins worth of stuff ALL of their Barbies except 5, Barbie closet in tow and left 1, just 1 shelf of toys. It was shocking to watch them dragging the bins to the garage. My oldest said “You know mom, I’m starting to think its better when you don’t have alot of stuff.”!!!
If you stop to think how overwhelmed WE get when we have to clean house, imagine what that’s like for a 6 year old. I’m very happy to have come across this article Ruth, thank you again. I am also happy that I involved my girls in the decision and watched them fly. I have a hunch that they aren’t even going to miss anything and eventually end up donating most of it. Now, on to teddy bears!
This is the way it *should* be done. You didn’t steal your kids possessions from them, and more importantly you actively involved them and made them part of the progress. That is the key here, that you actually gave some control to your kids and gave them input on what happens to their own things.
The mistake the poster of this article made is making the choice for them. Kids are not going to learn how to properly do thing if their parents always do it for them. If you just take away everything your kid(s) owns they’re not going to learn anything except fear and not only that, work to kill their ambitions….why strive to get or achieve something if someone is just going to come along and take away everything you worked for or you wanted?
Sorry, The Doctor, but that’s part of being a parent. The problem is that kids CAN’T make all of the decisions they need to make when they’re young. If they could, they would have chosen to do the room cleanup on their own without it being brought up. No, I’m not saying that kids aren’t smart, and it’s not that I’m not giving them enough credit, or blah blah blah, but that’s just the way it is. Kids DO need to be TOLD what to do. Not ASKED if they WANT to do it, and then be left to DECIDE. If they could decide everything for themselves, they could move out at age three and live alone, but alas- that’s not the case, and never will be.
No, being a parent is all about teaching your kids and training them to make decisions on their own so that they actually *can* be independent and make the right decisions when they finally move out on their own. There are some decisions that can only be made the parent, especially when a kid really young (like your three year old example). If you *keep* on making every decision throughout a kid’s life *for* them they’re never going to learn anything at all. As your kids get older there *are* plenty of decisions that they can quite easily make on their own or that should be left almost entirely up to them, deciding everything *for* them and never giving your kids any kind of input ever is only going to screw them up, and not only that cause them to resent you and see you as controlling (which would be an incredibly accurate description). And saying kids aren’t smart and not giving them enough credit is *exactly* what you’re doing, how ready each kid is to start making their own decisions or to have the parents start backing off depends entirely on the maturity of the individual kid(s), some will always need more care than others such as kids with Down Syndrome or other mental disorders that significantly affects people’s ability to fend for themselves, and others will be ready for it sooner than others. The whole entire span of the childhood and teenage years is for learning all of the lifeskills and decision making skills they’ll need when they’re finally grown up and out on their own, the whole entire job of a parent is to teach and guide their children so that they can learn these things, making every decision for them is not going to do that and is in fact bad parenting, being a helicopter parent is *never* a good idea and never actually solves anything.
I’m sorry, I should have tried to clarify what I meant better. I know that parenting is getting the kids ready to be a functional individual, and that DOES involve letting them make their own decisions, but I DON’T agree that that’s what should have happened here. She said her kids were like 6 and 7? (I think that’s close, I didn’t scroll back to the top to see.) In my opinion, 6 and 7 year olds, while yeah, are smart enough to make some of their own decisions, (getting back to the not giving them enough credit thing,) shouldn’t GET to decide to clean their room or not. That’s one of those classic “do as you’re told” scenarios. They were told by their mother to clean their room, and they “chose” not to, which isn’t an example of learning decision making, it’s an example of disobedience. When I was 7 years old, my mom still TOLD me what to do (for the most part,) like cleaning y room, and I didn’t get to *decide* if I wanted to obey or not. And thank heavens she did tell me what to do, and enforce her rules, or I’d still be living in a pigsty to this day! So I’m sorry if I didn’t clarify too well on that point- I get what you’re saying, and I agree to some extent, but not to the point of being able to *choose* if they obey or not. That should be a given- what mom says goes! That is also a crucial part of parenting, learning to respect authority. They won’t always get to decide what they want to do, say, in a job. If the boss says to clean something up, he/she isn’t gonna politely ask if they *want* to clean something up, he/she’s going to TELL them to, and they need to know how to obey. It starts at home.
Perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I thought I was either or should have elaborated more. When I’ve been talking about involving them in decision making or letting them have choices it was in the context of tasks like cutting down on clutter in the home or jobs like that. When they’re told to do something naturally they should do it or expect to receive negative consequences because that’s how it works in the real world and that’s part of training them and teaching them for independent life. I was purely talking about giving them a choice and involving them when it came to things like getting rid of possessions, *that* is a task that they should not be written out of. Whether they should have a choice in whether to get rid of anything or not I don’t really have an opinion on and frankly doesn’t really matter too much in the long run, but if their own possessions are being gotten rid of or put away in storage or whatever, that is where their input should be involved. That’s the kind of thing that I’ve been talking about when it comes to involving them in decision making and so forth.
Now taking something away as a punishment with the full intention of them getting it back eventually or earning it back eventually, that’s something I don’t necessarily approve or that I would do, but taking away their possessions and never intending on giving them back at all, like the writer of the article did, is absolutely *NEVER* ok (it’s stealing) and causes all kinds of harm to the relationship between the kids and the parent(s). This is something I speak very much from personal experience on as this sort of thing is exactly what I had to deal with growing up, mom would have regular episodes, completely with yelling and screaming, where if there was even the slightest bit of mess she’d go through and throw it all in a box and never give any of it back. I was terrified of her and constantly afraid of her coming in and stealing all of my stuff on a whim, or of my stuff that I’d let siblings use getting swept up with their stuff (didn’t matter whose it was, if it was there, it was gone, period) and stolen. It’s a big part of why there’s a big huge wedge between us even now and why I could even go so far as to say I hate her :/ With something like cutting down on excess or clutter, it’s important to lead by example (yet another thing mom didn’t do with us when stealing all our stuff, *her* stuff or dad’s was never gotten rid of at all) and to involve the kids on the things that are actually theirs, otherwise you’re going to have a world of trouble at some point down the road.
Firstly, I’m sorry about you and your mom. 🙁 I wish things were better for you. Hearing your given situation, I agree that that was probably pretty upsetting for you, as well it should have been, but I just don’t think that’s what was going on *here.* She gave them plenty of warnings, and it was after those warnings were given that she took their toys away, and she also said that they even helped pack them away, *and* were thankful for it. So I know that you had a similar situation and it ended badly, and again, I am sorry for that, but this situation was handled differently than yours and the outcome was wonderful! So in my opinion, she did the right thing.
Hah, I was kind of in a similar boat. My mother would randomly take my things when it suited her, whether to throw away or for gifting to the child of someone else if she suddenly needed a gift. No warning, no nothing, just poof gone because hey it was her house and she owned us and so the things we owned by extension belonged to her and she was the only one who mattered.
I still happily share for instance food items with others these days, but I’m nevertheless super territorial with my actual things and get disproportionately upset if someone damages or wants to use any of my items that I didn’t buy specifically for lending to people and that someone doesn’t immediately accept the first no. Yes, I have some things that are mine-mine-you-can’t-touch-it, and some things that I can lend or give to people at a moment’s notice, that I don’t really see as mine. I’m still trying to learn to be more normal about ownership, unsurprisingly… Some day, some day, I’ll finally not get incredibly stressed out when people are near “my” things.
I can imagine that this has been a difficult post for you to write. Some will agree and cheer you on yet others will disagree, criticize, and judge you unfairly. It is what happens when we openly share our lives on public forums. But I say good for you!!!! Ultimately, no one else knows what is best for your family. If you and your husband agree, and you see the fruit in your children than that is all that truly matters. Good for you for standing up for what is best for your family!!
Ruth
I love this post. I am sooo getting close to doing this same thing. I agree that kids don’t need to have a lot of toys. With too much stuff, my kids don’t use their imaginations because they can just pull out what they need instead of improvise. I want them to challenge themselves and use their imaginations. I am definitely going to try this. We have a mom to mom sale coming up where I can sell most of it! I also love the update you posted. It is good to know it is still continuing to work.
Totally love this post! Simple!