Montessori Mondays: Toy Rotation

Having too many choices overwhelms children, just as it does adults. (Right? ;) So it's so important to make your child's toy storage respond to that need so that you can have a happy, independent player on your hands. I advocate for making your child's toy selection appealing in its simplicity, accessible in its organization and manageable in its size. That said, it's much harder to do than it sounds. 

Last week, I set out to organize Coco's toys and ended up taking three full bags of toys down to our cellar space! Now she has one small box of plush toys, one small box of hard-sided toys, one pushcart and five other toys out at a time. It's still a lot of toys. Then, every ten days, I'll go down to the cellar and rotate out new ones. 

It was surprisingly very difficult to pare down her toy selection. I felt like I was getting rid of her toys and then I found myself almost sorting them unintentionally. That was when I realized I had to take a different approach. So instead of demoting lesser toys to the cellar, I decided to put many of the favorite toys in the cellar to start out instead. It was actually a really good approach. 

Surprisingly, the toys that remain are getting so much more use. I shouldn't be surprised, because it follows exactly the idea that too much choice is actually overwhelming, but it surprised me anyway. And knowing all those lovely favorites are down in the cellar is my motivation to rotate after ten days and not just forget about them. That will keep things novel and interesting for Coco all the time.

Best of all, I love that our living room is no longer being taken over by toys. (Now I just need to install the wall shelves in the kitchen so that everything that was in the sideboard before the left side was given up for toys isn't left just sitting on top. ;) Can you believe how quickly a small child accumulates toys? Do you rotate your child's toys? If not, would you?