Decluttering with Kids: Share Your Best Tips!

[Kat]

We shared some of our best decluttering advice the other day on Corporette, and I thought we might discuss the more parent-specific implications of the question over here: What are your best tips for decluttering with kids? Specifically, if you’ve got multiple kids, how do you walk the line between holding onto toys, gear, and clothes for the younger ones without your house feeling like a toy store exploded?

My boys are only three years apart, but my older one tends to be a bit of an “old soul” and a bit advanced in his tastes in toys and games. He’s also always been at the top of the height and weight charts. My younger one, on the other hand, is definitely young for his age, and he’ll sometimes get into toys years later than his brother did. He’s also near the bottom of the weight chart. So “decluttering” with toys and art supplies and gear like bikes/strollers/helmets tends to be a bit more difficult, and I hold onto things until I’m sure my younger guy won’t want or need them.

To make matters… more complicated, both sets of grandparents are always generous at birthdays and holidays, so we have a steady stream of new toys and gear coming into Casa Griffin. I also tend to be a “ooh good sale!” purchaser, and will, for example, randomly buy chemistry kits that are age-appropriate for 3–5 years beyond my kids’ ages. And, ah, I make a lot of “future purchases” for clothes. For example, H&M randomly had some really fun, bright shorts for little boys in their Conscious Collection, and I wound up buying three different pairs in three different sizes for my littlest guy to wear for future summers.

We regularly donate stuff (only about twice a year, though), and sometimes I’ll try to sell the bigger things, but the whole process of assessing what the kids want/need and wondering if I’m offending grandparents by giving toys away “too quickly,” takes time that I don’t generally have. Because some of our used stuff has special memories (for me, my husband, and/or my boys) it doesn’t lend itself to outsourcing either.

For clothes, I have things regularly controlled to a system, albeit a messy one: “Future” clothes for both boys go into their closet; we store the clothes my eldest has outgrown in a bin in my closet to await sorting. I used to use plastic sweater bags to sort and label the clothes (so there would be a bag of, say, “2T winter clothes”), but as the boys have gotten bigger, the clothes have too, so I’ve recently given up and just put all of the hand-me-downs in a huge laundry bin in my youngest’s closet, which I’m sure I’ll tear apart when he starts to outgrow his current size range.

{related: I wrote about how I organize kids’ clothing, especially their “future” clothes}

Readers, someone out there must have a better system with toys or clothes — what are your thoughts? What are your best tips for decluttering with kids?

Here are a few articles on point that I dug up, but I’ll note that a lot of these moms have small spaces, which kind of forces you into a certain minimalist lifestyle… I actually think the Simply Well-Balanced article has the best tips for dealing with a big purge, including some bright-line rules like “If it’s dried out, stopped working, or missing a piece, it goes in the garbage.” Kind of similar to one of the bright-line rules I shared in the Corporette post on our best decluttering advice — if you look at a room as only containing five things, it becomes easy to declutter: trash, dirty dishes, laundry, things that have a home, and things that don’t.

Readers, what are your best tips on decluttering with kids? What advice has been a gamechanger for you and your family? What have been your biggest decluttering struggles through the years with your kids?

• Marie Kondo’s Tips for Decluttering with Kids [PopSugar]
• How to Declutter with Kids; Real-Life Ideas that Work [Simply Well-Balanced]
• 21 Tips on Keeping a Simple Home with Kids [Zen Habits]
• 12 Decluttering Secrets from a Small-Space Mom [Mother Mag]

Stock photo via Deposit Photos / soleg.

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