We are definetely over 10, but I did send dh and ds to mil for a night earlier in the summer and I boxed up and listed a ton of toys on ebay. I made a good amount of money that went into ds and dd college fund and ds has not even noticed.

Most of the kids toys are in a plastic storage bin in the living room or in ds's room. We are finishing the basement (by ourselves so it is a LONG process) and the toys will more than likely go down there. I do want to get rid of some toys. It will be nice to have another garage sale come spring.

I do plan on keeping special toys of the kids'. HOWEVER, my MIL, kept EVERYTHING of my Dh's and SIL. So she pulls these 30 yr old toys out for my kids to play with (or any niece or nephew). Sometimes I have a hard time seeing they play with certain toys b/c they do not meet up to current safety standards. One time we allowed ds to stay the night there (this was before he went to his big boy bed) and we went to put him into the crib that she set up for ds (it too was used by DH and might have been used then???) and I know the slats were too far apart and he could EASILY swing his leg over the top and get out. So, we pulled him out of it and put him into the full bed in the room. Much safer. Sometimes keeping everything is not worth it.

Besides, how many stuffed animals does a 2 yr old need??

This is what I do.

I am a ONE toy bin type of gal, he can have one huge bin filled with toys, and the resy will be stored, and we trade them bins every other month. This way, he still has all of his toys, just not all at one time. This also prevents from being over stimulated.

I don't throw good toys away, I do throw broken toys out, and every now and then when we have too many stuffed animals that were not given to us by people we care about, we donate them.

What I try to do is 2 weeks before my kids birthday or Christmas I clean out their room. I get rid of broken toys, toys that don't have all the pieces. And then I pick out the ones they don't play with. If after that it still looks like they have too much. I try to eliminate more toys by using different thoughts of what should stay or go. I know my kids have way too many toys and definitely go beyond the 10 toy rule. With 5 kids how can you not have too many toys? I am even starting to go through them once every season. It gets better. Now they take better care of their toys so there are less broken ones. But we still have to get it down to where it is manageable for us to play and pickup.

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DH James DS Joshua DD Jessie DS Jacob DS Joseph (My Angel) DS Jonah DS Jonathon

IF you think really , really hard I bet you can ony think of three toys your kids honestly play with. My dd has barbies, my little pony, leggos, dora doll house, a train set and a few other oddies and ends. Thats it. We keep a closet of board games and crafts. A month ago I went into her room and threw away anything she didnt play with and that was all that was left. She never even noticed and her room stays much cleaner.

I have the same problem too. ESPECIALLY when we were getting ready to have our daughter I swore she would want to play with that ect. I found that freecycle is always good then you don't have to worry about taking them somewhere someone just comes and gets it from you and another kid will get to use it if you can't sell it at your garage sale.