Our New Toy Shelving
Sewing fabric bins has been going on apace and I was thrilled to complete four more this week, bringing my total to seven bins. Finally I was ready to set up a new toy area! The last three years our toy area has been set up in our ‘new bathroom area’, as this room is not plastered it smells of cement sheet dust. Also it wasn’t very large to play in, therefore the children haven’t played much with their toys.
We filled up the new bins, set up the toys on their new shelving, sold unused toys and gave away surplus furniture. The new toy shelving is a pleasure to look and it is a joy to watch the children once again playing with their toys.
We tend to have more traditional toys that last the distance of time; wooden blocks (in the huge plastic bin), dolls house, garage, wooden train sets, lego, marble tracks, car tracks, plastic meccano (from my childhood) farm animals, cowboys and Indians, dinosaurs, nerf guns, trucks and cars, dolls and dolls clothes, (mmm dolls and trucks are missing from their shelves) musical instruments, puppets and a huge collection of dress ups (not pictured) and the play kitchen. Of course there are the more educational ‘toys’ in the learning room too, puzzles, manipulatives etc and the outdoor toys.
Whilst re-organising I reflected upon toys and the part they have played in our children’s lives. When our oldest were little, toys played a far larger part in our family, but as our family has grown, we have found the children tend to play less with toys and more with each other. Toys still have a part but it is now rare to see a child play alone, toys are more a group activity. Bass (2) is the exception, he is our first child in years who is happy to play alone.
Having our core toys established makes it hard to buy presents for our younger children, after all what else do they need?
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2 Comments
jenmack
Love your fabric toy baskets, Erin!! What a terrific way to tidy the toy area! And…we're in the midst of the same overhaul of toys here…purging, sorting, selling, minimizing. I find myself relating to so much of what you shared in your post! Your point about how differently the children play with toys now as compared to how toys were used when you were a younger family with only littles; this is exactly what I have observed as well.
And this comment of yours:
>> Having our core toys established makes it hard to buy presents for our younger children, after all what else do they need? <<
….fits so well what we've been thinking! We have a comfortable and generous assortment of nice toys – well loved, quality, worthy of passing down. (And like you, we've spent the last few weeks sorting and purging….and I mean BRUTALLY PURGING….down to the quality things.) My husband and I were talking about a needed shift in gift giving for birthdays and holidays toward events, places, and shared gifts…especially for the younger kids because this home can only hold a finite amount of stuff! What more do we need? This will be an interesting thing to continue thinking about and talking about in the coming months! Do share what you come up with!
Erin
Jen
Glad you liked them, I'm so keen I'm making more, for other rooms:)
Brutal purging is hard, it's not hard for me, but hard for me to say to the children, it must go you really don;t play with it. They talk me out of it.
I've been thinking that as well as events and place gifts, what about lessons, music lessons, swim lessons etc. Something you otherwise couldn't afford. We have done shared gifts for quite some time, each Christmas we buy a bigger family item, trampoline, flying fox for dam etc