Clear Out the Clutter Challenge: Family room

Clutter removal, day 2!  I'm taking part in the Clear Out the Clutter Challenge, hosted by Crystal over at Money Saving Mom.

Check here for my clutter-clearing goals.  And I'm also giving away an organization book this week; click here to enter.

Today was the first day that all my children were back in school, so I decided to take on the biggest clutter challenge in the house: the toys in the family room.  This was a far bigger project than my front hallway, which I did yesterday.

My kids have a lot of toys.  A lot.  But, I swear, I've bought almost none of them.  They were either hand-me-downs from cousins, or birthday or Chanukah presents from friends and relatives.  I tend to get the kids books or art supplies, which aren't contributing to the family room mess.

Well, that's not quite true, as there were lots of books all over the place.  But they were easily cleaned up and put back on the shelves.  Next problem: toys with missing or broken parts.  I went through everything and threw out anything that was missing parts, or that was broken.

Next problem: some of the kids' toys were never assigned a place to be stored.  For instance, my youngest recently inherited a large collection of Littlest Pet Shop toys from one of her older cousins.  The smaller parts are in a bucket, but the larger parts and the bucket have just been sitting on the floor next to a coffee table for months.  I cleared out a shelf in our toy shelves and declared that their new home.

Lastly, we have lots of random toys, which went into containers for now.

So when the kids got home, they were happy to be able to find their toys, and immediately took out a whole bunch of them.  But that's why the toys are there, right?  I'll have to be better about making sure they put away what they've taken out, or we'll end up in this mess again.

Tomorrow, or when I get back to finishing this job, I'll go through all the toys and decide whether we should keep them or give them away.  Toys that get lots of play, of course we'll keep.  Toys that are in good condition but have been outgrown, or that they're just not interested in anymore, I'll put aside and take to Goodwill.

How have you been doing on your decluttering?  Leave a comment below!