A question for my fellow declutterers with kids - what do you do about their toys? My kids are 3.5 and almost 2 and still have more toys than I'd like them to have, but every time I put something in the donate bag my wife pulls it out and tells me about a time that one of the kids loved playing with that object. My main concern is the current lot of toys exceed the toy storage we have, so stuff just gets left out. I'm thinking I should rotate some toys to "away" in the closet and see if they are missed.
I would put almost all the toys away in a series of shoe boxes or baskets and stash them in the closet.
Our daycare did not offer a lot of choices of toys in the toddler, preschool or senior preschool rooms. They did have a big stash of toys in the closet and they would offer new choices just about every day. Books were also rotated day to day - but there was at least a dozen books out every day. There was always a craft option on the counter that the children could ask for. There were diverse types of toys, one spatial reasoning type, a construction type, some imaginary play types (dolls, trucks, puppets) But overall the room seemed very sparse the first time I went in. But looking around, each child was doing something. Too much choice overwhelmed the kids, I was told.
I started to replicate the methods of the day care. I put all the parts of a toy in a basket or box. Kids loved it when I would pull out something 'new'. I took them to the library and got a dozen books each week.
It helped in a lot of ways. House was cleaner, less cluttered. Kids played better. I was calmer - and we would put the toy back in the basket and on the shelf before starting something else, just like at daycare.
Toys that didn't engage them for very long or at all started to stay in the closet. Sometimes they had just outgrown it. Sometimes it just had no play value. By the time my son was about four some toys had to stay out because he played with them every single day for many minutes - Thomas, Lego. After about six years, he needed an area dedicated to lego that he could construct really elaborate structures. He still has a lego table in his room and he is 17.5. Now he builds something or modifies it for a few minutes each week to de-stress.