Bommi under the bed - how many toys is too many?

Does your child have a clear favourite toy or a few beloved items that they take with them on almost every play and outing right now? If so, that's great, because it just got a little bit easier to learn how to manage belongings! In this article, I'll tell you about Bommi under the bed - how many toys is too many? How you can use your most loved toys to help you and your child to declutter and organise.

At the same time, let's go through a few general questions: why is it important to reduce the number of toys and what helps when there are too many toys? You can also jump from the table of contents directly to the section of interest to you.

Why is it important to declutter toys?

It is not worth making a problem out of stuff or toys if they are not a problem. However, most of us quietly accumulate more toys all the time. The number of children's items and toys is growing by tens, hundreds or even thousands of individual items per family home every year.

This makes many things more difficult, causing stress for the child, challenges in managing activities and a sense of exuberance. Parents also become symptomatic if children do not clean up their toys.

What helps when we have too many toys?

If you have identified toys and belongings as a challenge, for most people it magically helps to prune away things and toys. So don't even try to organise them until they've been sorted through and decluttered.

For some of us, it is difficult to see where we need to cut back. You should declutter if:

So if your home isn't working, people are stressed and everyday life feels difficult, cutting back usually helps.

How do I know if we have too many toys?

You may have too many toys if

In terms of organisation and tidiness, it would be ideal to keep a quantity that can fit easily on a shelf or in a cupboard. Everything should have a designated place.

This is not scrimping, but an essential part of managing goods in the modern age. After all, there are plenty of goods and we are naturally always looking for more. So it's important to learn how to systematically manage your belongings or toys.

If your child is unable or unwilling to manage his/her belongings, start organising them or figure out his/her own belongings, they should start practising their belongings management skills. Putting toys away is part of these skills.

When it comes to play, it is optimal to follow the maxim "less toys, more imagination (play)". If play is not going well, one of the reasons may be excessive number of toys.

How many toys does your child need?

Reverse decluttering

KonMari, familiar to Finns and and many others all around the globe, has a guideline for saving the things that bring joy and discarding the rest. The method can be difficult to implement and for some a little impossible - all things feel important!

Instead of KonMari, you can use Reverse Decluttering in such a situation. It uses only the glow of the most loved items, like KonMari, but only the most loved ones are selected.

If a toy or object is so wonderful that you can't live without it, you take it as a benchmark for everything else.

If you identify the ones you love the most first, it's easier to put other toys aside - in a capsule or a thinking capsule. The rest can even be weeded out, if not now, then in a month or two after they're out of sight.

The few categories of toys that remain can usually be easily stored and made available to children and cleaned up with their skills, under their responsibility. This reduces the workload of the family's default organizer and teaches important management skills.

Can a 2-year-old really make decisions and take care of his or her own things?

In my opinion, they can. By observing your child, you can see pretty quickly which toy or object is important. But be careful. You may disagree, and even end up leading their process (shall we put this away?).

You might wish that expensive toys would win the day, but let the child decide. Try not to be controlling, rather ask which toy or five toys you want to choose as the most important.

The child wants to change the toys he or she chooses

The object of affection can change quickly, which is why some toys are encapsulated in a cupboard. The adult is involved in the process by leaving some 'open-ended' toys, even if they are not too attractive to the child at first screening.

This is because as toys become fewer, play skills develop, so toys that require more imagination may become more interesting.

Read about open end toys from a previous Ruuhkaton article and use the list of examples if you find it difficult to choose.

What kind of toys does your child need for quality play?

Child regrets decluttering toys and wants them back

This is a really boring point, but inevitably at some point most people will face it. But I think this is an important lesson for life. Let me give you a little background to the idea.

We all have a limited amount of resources, such as money or time. The same applies to the storage space in our homes. We simply cannot shop indefinitely, because then our homes become dysfunctional. This leads to physical illness (e.g. due dust), hazards (tipping over stacks) and mental strain (stress, anxiety) if we do not limit our desires.

As adults, we have a responsibility to teach our children about limits and patience. This may mean that before we buy more toys, we have to go through the old ones and even give some up. In these situations, a child may declutter something that he or she will later regret.

If space permits, I recommend using a Thinking capsule, where you can put a decluttered toy for six months or so. If they start to regret it, your child can ask to have it back.

This is difficult if the toy is remembered only after a year, when it has already passed on, or if there is no space to return the toys. At this point, I recommend discussing the situation transparently. Repeat what was agreed and push through the displeasure.

Can I declutter my child's toys without the child?

I don't recommend decluttering without a child for two reasons: at some point you'll have a difficult interaction when you have to explain where the toys went. This eats away at the trust between you.

Another compelling reason not to declutter without your child is that your child won't learn management skills if you do the decluttering for them. Only by going through your own stuff, and the whole emotional spectrum that goes with it, will your child learn to take care of his or her own belongings. Engagement will also allow you to keep things tidy and tidy up in the future.

Another way to think about it is, do you want to be responsible for all the things in your home from now until forever? Would you like others to clean up after themselves? Do you want your child to learn to make sustainable consumption decisions?

Sometimes it feels as if there is a complete disconnect in the conversation and the mere idea of organising a meeting turns into a dispute. In this case, it may be appropriate to have another adult to assist with the child's organizing and pruning.

How much can a small child clean up after himself?

What about the cleaning, can a 2-year-old, for example, be made to clean? Not on their own, of course, but even a 1-year-old understands what it means to take things out or put them away.

The magic is that the environment has to be clear and defined enough; where is the place for legos? And where are the dolls and their stuff? If your child is used to seeing other people collecting legos in their own box, they can be asked to collect them.

The instruction is clear and the place is limited, then collect. If they are not interested, then next time. The adult must model and remind first, practice works over time. Older children can already be held more accountable.

There's another trick here: you really do need to have some stuff on display. If the floor of the room is flooded and the bedspread is swollen, it's hard even for an adult to know where to start.

What number of toys is too many - How do I know whether to declutter or organise?

How many toys is too many? Or how much stuff should there be?

The amount one can manage. This varies according to people, homes but also according to life circumstances. In the busy years, there has to be less stuff, one simply does not have enough mental lane for managing more.

When following children, I have noticed that it is best to have categories of less than five for very young children and less than ten for school-age children, including crafting needs. This may seem like a very small number, but try it!

Reducing the number of toys really solves a lot of problems. You can put toys aside for a few months if giving up seems too radical. Some may be in a capsule, so that after a few months they feel like new. Cleaning up will become easier with less items.

If you feel that there is room for things in your cupboards, the problem may be that they are not in the best places. Even a small change can help and allow for easy organisation after use.

Skeletons in the cupboards and Bommi under the bed

Now we've pulled the skeletons out of the cupboards and found that less works better. So what's that Bommi (bomb) under the bed?

Our bed base used to be a dusting ground for toys, an obstacle to vacuuming, a sad sight and above all an endless source of frustration: "why can't they put these things away?!"

The solution to the situation was found in the adults, it was not the fault of the children. Adults determine how much the home allows for each category of goods to make everyday life still run smoothly. But how many toys is too many?

We had too many toys, as it was impossible for the child to clean them up and they were overflowing under the bed. The amount of toys made it difficult for the children to understand where the toy was stored. Toys drifted.

Now that the toys have been decluttered, none of them live on the floor. Everything is collected at the end of the day, in 5-15 minutes. Doable, manageable.

Sounds suspicious, I know. It was a long journey to get here, and it is never ending. New things inevitably come into every home and things get chaotic from time to time, often around the time of gift-giving. But now we have systems in place to deal with them.

It feels good to have all your stuff valued enough to have its own place. Every night we look for Bommi, she makes it all the way to bed in his little arms. It's a little one euro super ball that is now the most loved and treasured of all.

It doesn't matter if Bommi has been wandering around all day, she can usually be found under the sofa or bed quite easily. Wouldn't have found it before. It's still dusty under the bed, but nowadays no one is forgotten there.