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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I got excited reading this post. We downsized when we moved from a house to an apartment and we loved it. We recently moved from the apartment to a bigger house than we had before. Now, we have more than enough room for our stuff and we continue to minimize. I felt so much better getting rid of the clutter I had toted around for all these years. My kids are 11 and 13 and they have very few toys now. We still have to purge from time to time but they enjoy their stuff more when there is less to choose from. We all love it.
We don’t allow video games into our home at all. So my sister in law and mother in law thought that I was a child abuser for not allowing two little boys 8 and 5 to play the Wii or other things and bought them an entire system with every game and attachment possible. It sits at the top of a closet and it’s never been opened..two years later and my kids don’t miss it at all. In fact, I spent a day cleaning out a playroom and gave away seven large garbage bags of toys, games etc to the thrift shop and my kids didn’t even know it was gone. They get so much “stuff” from so many people who love them but all they really want is to spend time with them or play with them. My boys will live in a future filled with more technology than we can imagine so why would I want to waste their time and talents on video games? They will have plenty of time for that but they won’t have time to be brothers looking for bugs and building forts in my yard just because they can. Childhood is a wonderful and magical time if we allow our kids to create and just be kids.
I came upon your site yesterday and i read what you wrote about your life.
My parents were divorced when I was 3 and I grew up with my mom. When I was 12 she made someone new and moved in with him and started a new family with him. He didn’t really want me so I moved in with my father who then molested me. It took me awhile to understand what is going on and then I moved back with my mom and her new family.
Twice my mom threw away/gave away most of my things (including many of my clothes) – not as punishment for anything, she had her good, logical reasons (at least they seemed that way to her).
If you ask my mom, I was not traumatized by it in any way – she thinks I understood and accepted what she did as the reasonable thing to do.
Until today, 15 years after the last time she did it, when I mature and have my own family and my own home, I am traumatized by what she did.
Still today, because of what she did, I cling to “things”, to “stuff”. If a dish breaks – I can cry like something bad happened, because taking away my things as a child pulled the rug from under me and made me very insecure (years of expensive therapy…). Don’t know if I’m explaining myself correctly. It’s hard for me to describe.
I think what you did – taking away all your kids’ stuff – is horrible.
You may think your girls are happier now – but if you read the book “a child called IT” (if you haven’t – you should) and from my personal experience – kids adapt well to all kinds of bad situations (it took me a couple of years to realize my dad wasn’t good and that he was molesting me and I was 12 when it started!). It’s a self preservation mechanism.
My kids also have too many toys and books. Many of them I bought myself. Every year at the beginning of summer vacation we raid their play room and take out a lot of books, toys, games and clothes and give them away – but we do it together and they get to choose things they want to keep and things they can part with. They are very secure in their world.
Hope you will think about it again.
Elle, it sounds like you had a very traumatic childhood for a number of reasons, and I am so, so sorry for what you went through. That said, after reading your comment, I can’t help but wonder if the trauma of taking your stuff away has much more to do with your abandonment and abuse. As an abuse survivor, I know just how damaging that can be. I can assure you that my kids are not abused; on the contrary, they are loved, healthy, and happy, and not deprived in any way. I just don’t believe that stuff equals happiness or love, and that is not the message I want to give them. I do wish you the best, and I will pray for healing from what was clearly a devastating childhood.
That is an amazing story and something I think I should try with my own daughter. I have 3 kids but my middle one is the one who is constantly asking for things and thinking that she should get whatever she wants no matter the cost. I have explained several times that we are far from rich, money doesn’t grow on trees, and so on. Didn’t work. I tried making a chore chart and giving her an allowance so she could see what it was like to have to earn her money to buy things she wants but she would rather not do the chores, not get the money, and not get anything and still beg me for things. When I tell her no she will throw a temper tantrum that would make a two-year-old stand in awe. I just don’t know what to do anymore. That girl has everything and anything she could ever want. I thought the same way as you, make up for what I lacked in my childhood, but that thinking has left me wondering if maybe it’s better to not have anything.
Again, thank you for the inspiration to make a change in my family as well. I hope I see some of the same results that you have. I have threatened several times to take all the toys away because I’m sick of picking them up and being told no when I ask for help.
Just read this and then went and cleaned out my daughter’s room.
She has a couple storage bags in her room, when I tell her to clean her room she throws it ALL in this bags. 2 whole bags and the rest didn’t even fit. So she would throw it all in her toy chest.
I just went through and threw away all of the little toys she puts in those bags except her toy cars and animal figurines. It’s now down to 1/2 a bag.
We’re planning on moving here in the next 6 months or so and we’re trying to purge and get rid of excess stuff. Each item is 1 less item to move. She’s at school today and she probably won’t even notice. I’ll see what she says when she gets home.
I’m also contemplating throwing away her toy kitchen and food, she never plays with it, but I have a 17m old son that I’m thinking about keeping it for.