Toy Room: Before and After

6 months ago we had a very full toy room.  Every bin in it was full to capacity and we had FOUR large plastic bins in the back full of stuffed animals.  We had many big plastic toys in the corner of the room, and lots of small plastic bins in the closet as well.  We had two over-flowing bins of dress-up clothes and many little plastic toys in various bins.  I was glad to have a whole room for it all - even though it was a pain to clean up (all of the bins were labeled, but toys often made it into the wrong bins) - especially when any friends came to play.

After reading The Headgates, I realized that this was not good for my children and that I needed to greatly reduce the distracting and entertaining toys around our house so we got rid of a lot.  The kids were hesitant at first, but then jumped right in and got into the spirit of it as they realized that this would help them spend less time cleaning and more time using their imaginations.

Since then, little things have been filtering in and toys have been scrambled into the wrong bins again.  I let the kids keep several "sets" of things and those sets were scattered.  Bud is in charge of keeping the toy room clean and I don't go downstairs to check it enough.  He did an okay job, but things did get put away in the wrong bins and he didn't always see the little things on the edges of the room, etc.

Here is the before picture of the toy room yesterday (the kids had already gotten out a couple of bins to start going through - it wasn't usually this messy).

It does look kind of bad, but every single one of those bins used to be completely full, as was every shelf in the closet and there used to be stacked big plastic bins in the back of the room.  Anyway, this time it was easy to just put empty a bin on the floor, ask them to take only the things out that they use, and throw everything else into a D.I box.

We got rid of almost all small plastic toys (they almost got rid of their Littlest Pet Shop set, but at the last moment, they went and got it from upstairs and brought it back down - not ready to part with it yet.) We also got rid of our wooden puzzles (no one ever did them), and several dress-ups that they didn't use.  I can't remember all we got rid of, but here's a picture of the boxes for D.I. (the bags are clothes from the girl's room and dress-ups):

Here is what is left:

The clear bin on the left has what is left of the stuffed animals - much improvement from the four boxes before!  We used to also have large tots in the squares without bins,  and now those are empty.  Here is what is in the bins:

Top to bottom, left to right:
1) puppets (they were willing to let those go, but I wasn't)
2) Littlest Pet Shop (maybe someday they'll go!)
3) Music (recorders, silky scarves, cymbals, etc)
4) cars and planes (there's only about 10 or so left)
5) dinosaurs (we kept about 10 - we used to have two big bins full - the clear bins like the one the stuffed animals are in).
6) Baby dolls and their supplies
7) Star Wars (two light Sabers, a spaceship and 3 characters - we used to have a lot more)

In the closet:

Left:
 -The plastic play-houses are for the Littlest Pet Shop games - they almost went to grandma's house, but they decided to put them back ;-)
-Under those are the dress-up clothes you can hang and the little bin next to them is for misc dress-up things also.

Right:
 -The big bin on the floor is for outside toys (balls, foamy light sabers, jump-ropes, etc)

Middle:
-The little clear bins are stacked and empty.  The big clear bin in the middle has the blocks, Tinker Toys and Lincoln logs.  There's not a ton left of those either, but enough for them to make a nice set-up if they'd like.

Here is the other side of the room:

As you can see, the bins are empty except for some rope.  I think we'll put the rope somewhere else and donate the bins to grandma who inherited some of our toys from the last purge.  We put the plastic drawers that used to be next to the bins in the girls room for their socks and underwear. 

The kids were thrilled with their improved, orderly, toy room.  It does feel so much more peaceful in there and more inviting as a place to use your imagination without a bunch of entertaining distractions.  I'm happy with the progress.

I'll have to put my 6 month purge on hold until next week.  We have too much planned this weekend, but conference ought to give me any additional inspiration that I may need to finish going through the house right?  It's been fun so far.