Toy Crazy
Use Containers
Or, more specifically, use containers with labels. This one might sound obvious, but you can't underestimate its importance. Having a designated place for every toy, game and stuffed animal makes cleaning simple. And, with this type of organization, it's easy to enforce the rule of "put away one thing before playing with another."
Trade One For One
Create a rule: Whenever your kids get a new toy, they need to choose one that's already in their closet to donate. Not only is this an easy method for limiting excess, but it's also a great way to teach your children about charity and helping others from a young age.
Have a Limiting Container
Whether it's a set of drawers, a toy chest or a cabinet, have some sort of container that all your kids' toys must fit in. This ensures that you'll always be able to fully clean up without worrying about stuffing toys into a too-small space. For your kids, this means toys are fair game … as long as they fit in the limiting container. Once overflow starts, they need to make decisions about what to give away.
Cut Down on Duplicates
If you have especially limited space, keep just a few toys from each category: a couple dinos, a couple dolls, a couple sets of blocks, and so forth. This way, your kids still get variety, but your play area isn't overflowing with toys. It also will require your kids to use their imaginations to figure out how different sorts of toys can fit together for play.
Create Good Habits
This one should be obvious, but it's too important not to mention: Teach your kids to clean up after themselves! Not only will having their help reduce your clean-up headache, but it will also teach them good habits for later in life. Build cleanup time into playtime so that you're never rushing to put things away.
Keep Toys Contained
Open shelves aren't the greatest place to store toys … in fact, it's so easy to get playthings off open shelves that we don't even know if they really qualify as storage at all. When toys are "away," they should be out of sight. This also means that you can worry less about keeping toys perfectly organized within their container, since nobody can see what's inside.
