Toy library verses decluttering

[dakotablue]

We have too many toys, but I'm having such a hard time getting rid of anything as they are 'good' developmental toys.

We have blocks, legos, pounding toys, sorting, farms (one Schliech animals, one little people) vechicels, puzzles, wooden ramp toy, potato heads, art stuff and easel, tons of books, music instruments, dress up and felt playhouse...We don't have yet dollhouse or play kitchen...I was thinking for birthday and Christmas, though this Christmas will be wooden train track.

I was reading a book about education and came to the section about choosing a daycare and realized they were describing the 'centers' in my house. I want to have less, but not have less if you know what I mean.

What have you done? should I do? advice?

[zoebird]

i'm not sure which angle you are taking with this. :)

is it that you want to have less stuff?

is it that you think your children are overwhelmed with the stuff they have?

is it that you want to have less stuff visible at a given time?

i'm thinking that the first step might be a toy rotation. some toys out all the time, others out some of the time. Eg, you have two farms -- switch them out each quarter. Or to just have a good closet devoted to this, so that children can go in, grab what they want, use it, put it away, onto the next thing. 

we don't have nearly as much (and only one child) -- so we leave everything out all the time. I just did a cull, too, of some toys that he's not using and some that were passed onto us (but we didn't really want/need). I'm planning on either a book case or cupboard for his things -- that he can open and play with, and then we can tidy away at various times of the day. 

[tjlsmom]

would like to hear more suggestions about this too, as we are overrun with toys!