Toys can be so overwhelming sometimes. Everyone and their brother wants to give your kids a toy until one day you turn around and every square inch of your living room is covered in toys. But why do you need so many? The kids only play with a few at a time anyway. That is where toy rotation comes in.

What is a Toy Rotation?

It is pretty straight forward. You take the majority of your child’s toys and you put them away, only leaving out a select few toys for them to play with. Ideally, the toys have a very specific place in the house and once there, you rotate them often. I talked about where Mac’s toys are when I made my living room Montessori.

Why Should I Rotate Toys?

• Quality play-When there are too many toys, play quickly becomes disorganized. Instead of having one or two baby dolls to play house with, all of a sudden there are 15 babies to tuck into bed! Play quickly dissolves into disorganization and silliness.
• Organization-It doesn’t matter how many bins or toy shelves you have, the more toys you have available, the less organization they have. It is very easy for a child to clean up if there are fewer toys and everything has a very specific place.
• Excitement-When children are only allowed to play with things sometimes, they will be even more excited when each toy comes out. How many times have you found a shirt you forgot about at the back of your closet or a book you loved at the back of the shelf? It is exciting every time.

How Do I Start?

Ideally, you start at the beginning. When Mac was born, I only kept out a small basket of toys with only perhaps four toys in it. As she has gotten older, I have slowly added more toys or different sorts of toys to her rotation. But with older children, there are two ways to go about it. The important thing is that you know your child to figure out which route to take.

1. Pull off that band-aid fast: If your kid can handle it, take an evening after they go to bed and clean up those toys! Leave out some favorites to make sure they have something familiar that you can point to in the morning. If they ask about the other toys, just tell them that you put them away and they aren’t available right now. You could even take requests from them for toys to put out next time.
2. Sneaky Mommy: Do they have 100 dinosaurs out? Start to slowly pare that down to a manageable 10 by taking a few away each night. (Although if they have 100 dinosaurs, you may want to donate some of those instead of just stashing them for later.) Work on the toys they don’t care about at much first so it’ll be less of a surprise as they notice things slowly disappearing.

What Do I Do With the Toys?

Find a place and a way to store them. I store all of the extra toys in the large closet in Mac’s bedroom. (All of her clothes are kept in a dresser in my bedroom.) Everything is grouped according to subject matter and organized into the closet. But maybe all of your closets are filled or you want to group them a different way. What about a garage, attic, or storage closet that is easily accessible? You could put things into large totes to store them. Just remember, it doesn’t have to be pretty storage. Mac’s closet isn’t Pinterest ready, but it gets the job done.

As you weed out toys, this would be a perfect time to get rid of some of the toys. Now, I wouldn’t suggest going crazy and getting rid of everything, but if there are toys that your child has duplicates of or have never seemed to care for, get rid of them. The best thing you can do is to get them involved, if possible. Explain that they should choose their favorites and the rest will be donated to other boys and girls who can’t afford nice toys.

How Do I Rotate Them?

You need to set up your own rotation. Think about the best time for you and when you can switch out the toys. I try to switch the toys out on Sunday night/Monday morning. I set aside the toys I want to put away on Sunday and grab the new toys on Monday.

The key, though, is to only switch out some toys. You don’t want to take out everything or that will mess up the child’s sense of security. Imagine if every week someone switched all the books you had out, no matter if you were still reading them or not.

Sometimes, I like to find a theme. One week I’ll put out things with vehicles, the next week things with animals. I also like to put out holiday things. I have books and puzzles that are holiday themed and I make sure to have them out well before the holiday.

So, do you have a toy rotation? How do you have yours set up? If you don’t, are you thinking of starting one? Comment below.