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March 31, 2025 14 mins
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LIVE WORKSHOPS!  Join us for our Clutter Clinic Workshops, where we’ll tackle the mess and create simple systems that actually work for your life! Whether it’s your closet, kitchen, garage, digital files, or even that endless pile of paper, we’ve got you covered with practical, doable strategies that make organizing easy—and even a little fun! 

Thanks to our amazing sponsor, Kate Hufnagel, aka the Digital Wrangler, we’re starting the year with a focus on decluttering not just our homes, but our digital lives, too. You can check out her offerings here.

It’s the final week of our Spring Cleaning Series, and we’re wrapping things up with a topic every parent can relate to—TOYS. 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re drowning in stuffed animals, building blocks, and tiny figurines that somehow multiply overnight, you’re not alone! This week, I’m sharing practical strategies to tackle toy clutter, make the cleanup process easier, and even get your kids involved.

🚨 LAST CALL: Clutter Clinic—Closets! 🚨

If you’ve been thinking about joining our Clutter Clinic workshop on closets, now’s the time! This is your last chance to sign up before we close registration, so don’t miss out.

Why You Should Listen
  • Get simple, stress-free strategies to tackle toy clutter

  • Learn how to involve your kids so YOU aren’t the only one cleaning up

  • Discover the importance of seasonal toy purging (trust me, you don’t need all those Happy Meal toys!)

  • Find out more about upcoming Clutter Clinic workshops

Key Takeaways
✔️ Break decluttering into phases so it doesn’t feel overwhelming
✔️ Sort and categorize toys to make clean-up easier
✔️ Create a rotation system to keep playtime fresh and reduce clutter
✔️ Involve your kids by making it fun—think donation days, toy swaps, or a “goodbye party” for outgrown items🎧 Listen now and take control of your toy clutter!

🔗 Sign up for Clutter Clinic before it’s too late!
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
May have heard me talked about it before, but we've
partnered with my friends over at the Digital Wrangler who
have put together an incredible framework to help you simply
and easily corral all of your important papers into one spot. Now,
I know this seems like a very daunting task and
really boring. I'm not gonna lie, but if you need

(00:23):
to access passwords, bank accounts, medical document just any of
those like really clutch important information, insurance company stuff, having
it all at your fingertips, especially in today's digital age,
when so much of our stuff is online and we
don't even have the peaper statements at our hand, makes

(00:44):
life so much easier. Have the peace of mind of
knowing that you can have one place, a shared document,
a shared Google Drive or spreadsheet, that you can access
all of the key people and players and accounts that
you need when you need them is really invaluable. And

(01:07):
so I am encouraging everybody to think about all the
different areas in their lives that you need to get organized,
and I can help you do it with the help
of my friends over at the Digital Wrangler, and so
together we've put together a special promo for all of
you guys out there. All you have to do is
visit the Digital wrangler dot com Flash tol for this

(01:33):
organized life and you'll get ten percent off. And if
I am here to walk with you and help you
through it, my friend Kate is there. She's got a
bunch of incredible online tutorials. And again, this is a
gift not just for yourself, but for your loved ones,
because if you're ever in a situation where you are

(01:53):
unable to retrieve this information, you want to be able
to know that the people who you love you want
to have access to your information, can easily go ahead
and find it. So again, check it out thedigital wrangler
dot com Flash Tool. Everybody, welcome to you today's Tip
of the Week episode. I'm your host, Lori Palau and

(02:15):
happy that you're here. We are wrapping up our Spring
cleaning series, and if you haven't already listened, I encourage
you to go back check out some of the past
episodes that we've done this month where we've talked about
some of the common areas that kind of either get
neglected or that people have dread and put off kick

(02:36):
the can down the road, but are really can make
up a big difference if you are kicking off the
season like fresh without the clutter, it really does make
a big difference. And we've talked about things like medicine,
cabinets and lending closets and the pantry, and then we
tackle garages, and today I'm going to be focused in

(02:57):
on toys and I think that's a really important one
to do in the spring. I know we do a
big emphasis of toy cleanup or toy decluttering usually like
right before at least we did when my kids were small,
in like right before holidays, so we would do it

(03:17):
like around November, we would try a beginning of December
we would go in and do that. But I think
this is a really good time as we're entering spring
to also address toys because at least again where we
live in the Northeast, as you move into the warmer months,
you're going to be changing the types of activities that

(03:39):
you're going to be doing. And so anytime that you're
in a transition period, it is a good kind of
like time to hit like the reset, and it getting
those the kids in the habit of being part of
that is a good way for you to teach them
that life skill and so today. There are a couple

(04:01):
different ways that I can go with this. I thought
toys would be a good appropriate one. Now, obviously a
lot of this is going to vary on the ages
of your kids and what the activities that they're getting into,
So we're gonna be talking on some generic level, and
then you can always, of course customize it depending on
your own particular situation. So the first thing that I

(04:24):
want to say, and this goes whether you're dealing with
kids or you're dealing with adults, is you want to
declutter in phases, right. You don't want to, especially when
it's kids and they have the attention span of a fla.
You want to make sure that you're not going to
be like, Okay, we're going to tackle your entire playroom
at once, or we're going to tackle all of your
toys at one. That is just a recipe for disaster.

(04:48):
It's going to be there's gonna be tears, there's going
to be yelling. It may be for you, it may
be for them. I don't know, but literally, I think
the best thing that you can do is just picking
a specific area that you're going to tackle at once,
and maybe you set a timer there you can try
to gamify it. We've talked all about in the past

(05:09):
about different ways that you can gamify the whole organizing
and decluttering process to make it a little bit more fun.
Maybe giving amount above bribing your kids, but giving them
some specific timeline that we're going to do this for
a certain amount of time and then we're going to
take a break is totally acceptable in my book. But
I do think it is important. Just like when we

(05:30):
have these conversations around the holidays where it's okay, we're
going to be making room cycling stuff out so that
we can make room for new stuff to come in.
When you are talking about stuff seasonally, we are going
to be making room maybe for more outdoor stuff, and
we're we're going to be putting away some of the

(05:53):
more kind of winter type activities, if there is such
a thing. So really thinking about what are the things
that your kids are into, both in a theme like
something they've made outgrown something since the past in the
past few months, they're no longer into something, But then
also is this something that they're going to be playing with.
For example, if you want to encourage your kids to

(06:14):
be outside, maybe you want to be putting away some
of the puzzles or more indoor things. Maybe you want
to bring out into rotation, some things that are going
to be more encouraging for them to want to be outside. Now, again,
outdoor toys don't always live in the house, so there's
always this gray area. But just thinking about as a parent,

(06:36):
how do we want to be setting ourselves up for
what we want our kids to be doing. We have
very limited control, very limited amount of time that we
have a say so over what they play with, who
they play with, all those things. And so while we
still have that, how can you set your space up
with your kids in a way that's going to encourage

(06:57):
and foster them to do the activities that you want
them to do and play with. Okay, I'm not a
big fan of the one in, one out rule, but again,
there are times when you have a designated space, whether
that's a bin, whether that's a basket, it's a cabinet,
a drawer, that it might be bursting out at the seams,

(07:18):
and we know that they can only hold so much stuff.
And if the winter, and especially if you're in the
Northeast that this winter was brutal and we were indoors
a lot, and oftentimes things just probably got really cluttered
and things got shoved in places that it probably shouldn't

(07:40):
have And there's no shame in that. It is what
it is. But now it's time for us to do
our espr empty sort, purge and being really intentional about
what we're putting back. And if we know that we
have a defined space of a bin, a basket, a cabinet,
a drawer, what is going to live there? So just
be really specific over we have this much space and
we have this much stuff, what isn't going to go back?

(08:04):
That is part of that whole decision making process. And
again age appropriate. If your kids are super small, you're
going to be making those decisions. But as they start
getting into kindergarten and up like they're going to, they
should be able to have a say so over what
they want to play with and what they're going to
play with. And then just making sure that your bins

(08:28):
or your stuff is labeled or at least categorized. I
just helped a client friend of mine redo her playroom
for her kids, and we kept as broad. I didn't
label everything to be super micro because when I want
the kids to clean up and they're not necessarily even
reading yet, but they knew that all their building blocks
go over here and all of the doll stuff goes

(08:50):
over here. So you just want to least categorize it,
even if you're not super like over labeling to the
nth degree. You want to give it enough flexibil that
stuff can float in and out. But you also want
to have enough of a defined space that if kids
are going to play with a particular category like legos,
they're going in there and they're not finding like Barbie

(09:13):
clothes in the legos, if that makes sense, And that
also comes I think a lot of that comes with
the practice of again building in time for the cleanup.
Oftentimes what happens is we don't factor in the cleanup
as part of the play date or the play time,
and so everything when we're done, everything just starts getting

(09:35):
thrown in. So giving you that time, just like if
you're doing a workout and you want to factor in
the last five minutes for stretch, you need to factor
that in. It's the same thing, otherwise it's just bound
to not bin. And this again leads me to the
next point, which is teaching your kids to participate. You

(09:56):
want to get them involved. You want to get them
involved in the decision making. It be hard, you don't
have to do it for long stretches of time, but
you want to allow them to feel like they have
some ownership. You don't want to just throw their stuff
away in the dark of night. We've all done it.
I'm not judging anybody, but the more that you can
help them build that muscle of knowing that I'm no

(10:18):
longer playing with this, and I'm gonna pay it forward
to somebody else. I'm going to donate it, I'm going
to give it away. We're going to put it away
until for a few months and so we can play
with something else. Letting them know that we're just going
to put this over here for now, and then we're
going to make room to bring this out. Having those
conversations with your kids is important, and it allows them

(10:40):
to understand that there's a methodology between their stuff and
their space, and that is really important, and that oftentimes
gets really lost and then parents don't understand why their
kids get upset and frustrated because they were never taught.
And so this is this is absolutely a teachable moment

(11:03):
for you and again, try to make it fun. We
all know that sometimes decluttering and organizing and just household
chores in general can be boring. Right, they're monotonous. But
it doesn't have to be dreaded. It doesn't have to
be a punishment. You can gamify it, you can make
it fun. You can do some decluttering races. I used

(11:27):
to give each of my kids a bag and I
would say, okay, you guys, I want you to go
through and fill up a bag of donation stuff. So
go through and pick up the stuff that you no
longer play with. And whoever brings it back to me
the fastest or whatever it is, or whoever fills it
up the most, or whatever you want to say, whatever
rules you want to set wins or gets an extra

(11:51):
gets to choose whatever game we play, or what we
have for dinner, or whatever pries air quote that you
want to offer the kids. Things that you can do
to make it less or more palatable and less of
a draft. So again, getting them involved doing it. This
is a great time to do a reset. There's a
few times a year we've got the right before when

(12:14):
it comes to toys, right before the holidays, before they
go back to school and spring. Those are three really
pivotal times and this is a great one. So I
hope you found this helpful. Just a reminder that we
are going to be kicking off next week our Clutter
Clinic series. We're going to be kicking it off with
Clutter Clinic Closets. It's our live speaker workshop at the

(12:38):
time it's recording. I'm not sure how many tickets are
still available, but definitely go check out Simplybeorganized dot com
Slash Workshop. There's also a link in the show notes
where you can see which of the topics interest you.
We've got closets in April, garages in May, kitchens in June,
playrooms in August for skins in July, and then September

(13:02):
is paper and October is digital, so we have you
covered in a lot of different areas and this is
a great place for you to get inspired and motivated
to tackle these areas that may have been a drag.
Ask your questions to me live in a real time
and it's going to be super fun and I can't

(13:22):
wait for you to join me there. So visit again
our website Simply the Letter b Like Boyorganized dot com
Slash Workshop to grab your tickets until next week. I'm
Louri Palau. Peace out. Thanks for tuning in. If you
like this episode, please spread the love and share it
with your friends. And if this is your first time
joining us, make sure to click the subscribe button wherever

(13:44):
you are listening so you never miss an episode. And
while you're there, please leave us a review so other
people know that our show is worth to listen. You
can also find us on YouTube and Instagram at This
Organized Life Podcast, and if you'd like to connect with us,
you can head on over to our website at simply
the letter, b like boyorganized dot com, which is filled
with tons of resources, including free downloads, checklists, links to

(14:06):
our amazing organizing partners, and all of our digital offerings.
I'll see you next week for another episode of This
Organized Life
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