Toy War

My war with toys.

I am begging for your ideas, readers...here I am with a house that will likely be completely over-run with toys in 2012 should the exponential growth of the toy collection continue and the world not end as predicted.

The glut of possessions, of things, of consumerism gone wild--it's so overwhelming around my home. It's a small house to begin with, and there are 9 of us living here, but without clutter, we'd all have elbow room to spare.

I hauled off about a pickup load of excess over Winter Break. I gave away that much or more on Craig's List late last semester...but you would not know it looking around here. I am going to attack the garage on a nice day again and weed out more junk, maybe even the Christmas baubles. I am being more and more hard on myself so that I can then hold my kids accountable.

They have never practiced good stewardship of their things....I would argue it's because they simply have far too many things (like the rest of us in the house). I know that people like buying kids toys, for then they get that woo-hoo reaction from the tykes. However, as a parent now on the backside of gift-giving, let me attest to the complications. With three boys and a girl, one magnifies the toy collection quickly every holiday. We just survived Christmas and two recent birthdays, and for all of these we pleaded for reduced toys. I hauled about 60 gallons (based on trash bag capacity) of toys to the garage in November, but now the toy room is literally knee deep in new toys. Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

The kids were fascinated with the toys I rediscovered with them during my last purge. They fell in love all over again with Elmo, with puzzles, with legos, etc. Add to this that my oldest son knows and names every character, every little tiny plastic soldier, every stuffed animal...even the broken ones are valuable to him for they are wounded in battle or maimed from a shark attack or whatever the backstory.

According to Jax, these "Joes" must face off against the snake and the castle. In this picture, one can see Duke and his army, namely Double Snake Eyes, Crouch, Captain Fire, Agent Black, Army Green, Captain Twin, Private Goggles, Captain Vest, Captain Tiger Stripes, Contact, Ice Sculpture, Twin Eye (the one girl in the crowd), Bionauc Eye, Jack Erwin, Crash, and in front again with the white pants, Duke.

Everyone has a backstory in the toy room, if you talk a while with my son. His sense of ownership, then, is very powerful. He just can't let go. He takes pictures of his toys, knowing that some will end up lost in the shuffle for a while, buried, stored in the garage (and sometimes his ruthless mom actually GIVES AWAY or SELLS some things).

There you have it. Now, what can I do about it? I have tried sharing images, video, etc. of kids in need. I've tried appealing to their profit motive, urging them to sell things at a garage sale. I've tried rotating toys in/out of storage (successful, but it does not reduce the number of toys overall, and eventually my storage area will still be overwhelmed).

I know, I'm the parent. I can just set a cap on toy ownership and be an ogre. These are their things, however, and I don't want to pitch that ever-so-valuable one-eyed stuffed bear which was so meaningful. I don't want to scar my kids for life.

SO...what is to be done?