8 ms·

Why so many families are "drowning in toys"

66 points by gmays 2y ago

chiffre01 2y ago
Is anyone here involved in the toy industry, whether in design or another role? What’s the industry’s take on this?
deleted 2y ago
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pkaler 2y ago
I have a 9 month old and we are drowning in toys. We have bought very few of them. The article is clearly not written by a parent because it barely touches on Buy Nothing Groups on Facebook. We've barely bought any clothes either. They all come from Buy Nothing groups. Kids grow out of toys and clothes every 3 months. Parents are desperate to offload this stuff. And my wife has become a hoarder as have other parents in the neighbourhood. Buy Nothing groups seem to set off some sort of hoarding affliction in parents.
- fecal_henge 2y ago
  Try not to worry. Its not like your baby's first Christmas is just just round the corner.
- riffraff 2y ago
  My local group is not "buy nothing" but rather "zero waste" but yeah the amount of quasi-trash that my wife keeps bringing home ("this is broken but I'll fix it!") is crazy. A few weeks ago she managed to offload a pink salt lamp to a lady, mentioned "this is not working but should be easy to fix" and the lady replied she's just gonna feed it to some goats and it was glorious.
  - sourcepluck 2y ago
    I could be totally off the mark but this sounds very much like leboncoin!
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  There's a big fat grey area between being a hoarder and simply not being wasteful ;-) Good luck!
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    There's not enough energy left after a regular work day to make the decisions to winnow out all the toys That . Just . Keep . Coming .
- gwbas1c 2y ago
  > The article is clearly not written by a parent because it barely touches on Buy Nothing Groups on Facebook. The author very clearly indicates they have children. I don't think the author wants to make it an article about themselves. Keep in mind: Toys just show up from well-meaning people. There's a lot of social momentum around gifting; I started dreading Christmas because it means a bunch of toys my kids won't play with. And, not only am I drowning in toys, I'm drowning in books too.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    pretty much the only toys i get for my kids to get are lego compatible bricks. with those it doesn't make a difference if you have 1 or 10 kg of them. just add to the pile. no books in my house because we are moving to often. but i grew up in a library. my dad probably has 10-15m worth of bookshelves. from my granddad we inherited 3 or 4 times as much. but they were both collectors, curating their collections with care. still, sorting through those books to figure out whats valuable is a lifetime occupation. and i can see how a lot of books can be overwhelming if you are not into that. a year ago i heard about someone passing away leaving behind a house with a collection of 75000 books. the cost to sort through them would be higher than the value of the collection, so instead it all goes to a landfill because i a not even sure it can be recycled or the cost of getting it recycled was to much too.
    - sricks3 2y ago
      There are a few types of toys that my wife and I are still ok with getting and Lego is one of them. She's started using the phrase "more really is more" to describe the category. Basically, it's systems where you build something and the more you have, the more things you can do: Lego, Brio, Magna-Tiles, Hot Wheels track, etc. Even things like Pokemon cards (if your kid actually plays the game) can fall into this. You do have to be careful not to end up with too many of these systems, especially really similar ones. We're also still ok with getting books. We have a few too many for our shelf space, but at their current ages, our kids are aging out of books about as quickly as they receive new ones. I just need to do a better job of giving away the old ones more regularly.
  - 2y ago
- milesvp 2y ago
  Probably has something to do with the price of zero. The concept keeps showing up in random feeds for me, and it’s something both marketers and behavioral economists like to talk about. It seems free short circuits a lot of our normal cognitive pathways. That said, I learned an interesting trick years ago. If you’re trying to get rid of junk, leaving it on the side of the road with a free sign is not as effective as using a sign with a slightly more than nominal amount. $25 used to be the sweet spot, $50 might be better today. Probably depends on the thing. Make it look like they’re getting a deal. Items tend to disappear after that, though I did once have someone knock and pay.
deleted 2y ago
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_fat_santa 2y ago
> Shelves overflowing with cars and blocks and action figures can be just as stressful for kids as they are for parents. Sometimes “kids don’t play with anything, because there’s just too many options,” said Sarah Davis I find it quite interesting that "choice fatigue" is found just about everywhere, from what show to watch on Netflix to what toy your kid picks up. Semi related anecdote but I recently picked up a Steam Deck with the intention of emulating PS2 games. One thing I was very intentional about is to not load it up right away with every game imaginable but rather, go one game at a time, much like I used to when I still had to buy these games at the store. I use the Deck quite often and attribute much of that to the fact that I limited my game options, as if I loaded up every game I could possibly play then I would just drown in choices.
- matthewfcarlson 2y ago
  I've been debating getting a steam deck for a few years now and getting close to pulling the trigger. That's good advice, thank you
  - koinedad 2y ago
    Steamdeck is awesome. Just don’t sign up for the wishlist sale emails . I had to turn off notifications because I was buying way more games than I could play.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  I feel the same way about books.
- frereubu 2y ago
  Sounds like mindfulness - set your intention before you use something and keep checking in to make sure you're not getting distracted (by something other than the game!)
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  Yep. Currently going through choice fatigue in trying to decide what program to use for designing things that will be 3D printed. There's also a seemingly endless number of guides to help you choose, each with its own set of reasons, which only expands the choice landscape even further.
duxup 2y ago
Toys are cheap, many last a long time, and they're handed down / given away regularly. Even when we bought toys we got them at a second hand store and they were crazy cheap. By the time I had a second child we didn't "need" anymore toys, but we still got them for birthdays, holidays and so on.
darrylb42 2y ago
Not to mention the really cheap plastic stuff given away in gift bags when it is someone's birthday. Small non-functional yo-yo's balls with paddle. etc. Since you can't give food or candy for fear of nuts. For things like LEGO they are mostly specific sets, so they get built and displayed like models by my kids. Rarely to they build random stuff like I did when I was little, with only a small amount of LEGO.
- riffraff 2y ago
  When did gift bags at parties become a thing? When I was a kid the social contract was "I host the party you give me a present, and next time you get one". When my kids come home with gift bags I feel like screaming.
  - munificent 2y ago
    I think the trend of gift bags comes from a good place. Parents saw that when the birthday kid gets everything, it's easy for that to become a lesson in selfishness and Main Character Syndrome. Having the birthday kid also give gifts to the guests helps make it feel like a shared experience where everyone is important. The plastic junk is just collateral damage.
    - em-bee 2y ago
      i have the impression that in china gift giving for birthdays is less common (in general most gifts are red envelopes with money anyways). as a consequence there is no expectation for kids to bring a gift when they attend a party. as a parent i would make that explicit, in order to be inclusive, i would ask/demand that no presents be brought to the party. any friends or family who do want to give a present should do that in private before or after the party, and all present are also to be opened after the party when the guests are gone. that avoids a number of problems. the birthday kid can focus on the party and the guests instead of being focused on the presents. any disappointment about the "wrong" presents is hidden from the giver. givers won't be embarrassed or judged in front of the party if their present is somehow inferior to others. or givers can't brag about their cool present, and also the kids can't show off what cool stuff they got. really wrong presents can be ignored, returned, passed on without any fuss....
digging 2y ago
Reminds me of going through my old toy chest with my parents. Most of what I found I just tossed - my mom wanted to offload to goodwill but I was sure few of them were worth it. The items I wanted to keep were mostly either silly figures of animals I like (old-school dinosaurs, etc), or creative stuff like Bionicles. In fact, I took home the Bionicles and spent a few weekends actually playing with them, creating new figures. I'm certainly not neurotypical, but I feel that a decent barometer for toys that will truly engage a child is "Could a creative adult also enjoy this?" I have some young children in my life and agree the landscape of toys-and-their-ads is insane these days. Especially with the crisp unboxing videos, it's so hard not to want to get the weird (and, truthfully, often quite creative, on the designer's part) stuff that's coming out. I sympathize with parents; it's never going to be easy to say no even once you've identified that a badly desired toy is actually going to be a waste of money 6 hours after purchase.
- matthewfcarlson 2y ago
  > "Could a creative adult also enjoy this?" That's a very good metric. I've had friends ask me when I come up with an activity or toy, "how did you think of x?" The answer is "it sounded fun to me if I was a kid."
- bluGill 2y ago
  Many of your odd toys don't even meet modern safety standards and so should be either tossed or put in a collectors display cabinet where kids won't touch them. Sure we survived, but that doesn't make them toys safe.
  - WillPostForFood 2y ago
    Oh no, "You'll shoot your eye out kid"
    - mikestew 2y ago
      You jest, but if that kid weren’t wearing glasses… I was thinking more of lawn darts. One look at those, and you just know that one is eventually going to end up in the back of someone’s skull.
widowlark 2y ago
I own an Analogue Pocket, which is an FPGA system for the gameboy color (and more). I have found that by forcing myself to just play the inserted cartridge instead of games loaded on the the memory card, I have a high attention span for the game and can play for longer periods.
matthewfcarlson 2y ago
My own experience, but I've been very happy with the level of toys I have. It feels manageable and I can pick up all toys within 5 minutes (depending on how scattered they got). However, whenever kids come over to my house (particularly slightly older children- 6+), their first comment almost without fail is "where are all the toys?" I feel like our choice has been fairly intentional.
efields 2y ago
The biggest takeaway for me is that toys are 4x cheaper to make than they were 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation. So it's just easier to buy more of them. As another poster mentions, this article fails to dig into the Buy Nothing communities, or even Facebook Marketplace. We actively try to get rid of the kids stuff as they outgrow them, and these are the two places we first hit up.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  I talked with the parents of a 30-year-old family member. They said their child had overflowing toys 29 years ago...
- PrismCrystal 2y ago
  Toys I remember from the 1980s had already outsourced production to Taiwan. I assume that things soon moved to China, but it is astonishing to think that Chinese labor could have made already cheap Asian production so much cheaper. So, I assume that the drop in production costs is driven by some kind of industrial process improvements?
riffraff 2y ago
It's interesting that the article keeps referring to stuff kids see in tv or YouTube. But my kids don't watch TV with ads and don't watch YouTube unboxing videos, and my house is still too full of toys. I have to keep reminding my friends and relatives to not get them more stuff. Toys are just too easy too available.
carlosjobim 2y ago
The article is not talking about the real cause: There is an ongoing extermination of young people through low birth rates. Any child today is inheriting toys from several childless uncles and aunts and friends of parents, or getting presents from them.
- analog31 2y ago
  Indeed, same thing with housewares. How many sets of wedding china does anybody need?
- mmh0000 2y ago
  I know the "media" talks all about poor birth rates and all. But, there are more children now in the US[1] than there ever has been: [1] https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Do these statistics correspond with what you observe in everyday life? There is a reason why Lego has shifted focus from the child market to the adult market. But I admit that declining birthrates is probably not the only reason. There are decades of mass produced toys that get inherited/reused, and as the article points out; mass produced goods are cheaper than ever, especially plastic stuff like toys.
    - mmh0000 2y ago
      Yes. All I can assume (by making an ass out of me) is that you live in a big city. Come to suburbia, there are children everywhere, all the time. As for the lego thing. Yeah, just take a moment to think this through. Lego has become absurdly popular with adult nerds. Adult nerds have money. Children do not have money. If your company was previously marketing to children. But, suddenly had a large influx of interest from people with money. Who would you market to? Are you implying "The Government" is lying? Because now we're entering crazy-land and I won't discuss that further.
MrMcCall 2y ago
It looks like the parents in the article are not teaching their children that each kind of toy should be put away before the next toy gets brought out to play with. Teaching children that mixing all one's toys up creates an unusable chaos is a good lesson for how to (not) organize one's work environment, room's clothing, kitchen area, etc. Installing a sense of order is IMO a valuable lesson for young people. As a family with a lot of Lego (both daughter's Friends stuff and son's Technics and Ninjago), they have put in signifcant work to keep it sorted so that it remains usable. I understand that most parents are not so diligent (time constraints for working parents are brutal), but our primary advantage is that the kids have never had their own tvs or internet-connected devices (except for son's chess computer which is in our living room). Not having on-demand media has left them needing to choose their own activities, which includes asking to watch something specific within our shared media computer. What is nice about this is that we almost never have to ask either of them to clean/organize their areas, because they have learned the Marie Kondo-style kind of joy in keeping your area organized. And, yes, our daughter read and loved that book. [Side note: not having on-demand media also helps develop their joy of reading, though it was more difficult for our son than daughter.]
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  But can we maybe for once ease off on the blatantly moralizing at parents? In my circle of friends and family, every single parent wants to uphold this standard. The only ones who have actually succeeded in consistently maintaining it also have a very authoritarian parenting style. Everyone else has settled on compromising to various degrees.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    Morality is what keeps one race of people from enslaving other folks; keeps someone from robbing or killing another, and many other negative attitudes and behaviors. We human beings are the only moral creatures around here, being able to learn from our mistakes, evaluate the results of our actions, and change how we go about things. This world absolutely needs more moralizing, not less, but not self-righteous I'm-better-than-you kinds of pompous bullsh_t, but just results-based, impartial discussion of what the best outcomes are and what the best methods are to achieving them. Regarding parenting, one has to find the middle way, being neither abusive nor too slack. The important thing to understand is that children are intrinsically selfish, and that we have to teach them empathy and kindness, and -- most importantly -- that they have selfish impulses they must resist, in order for the society as a whole to function its best. No, most people do not have the level of understanding about human nature to properly educate their children. Not having learned how to live, parents are now doing their best, but have failed to question the inertia of our world techno culture, that is overlaid on their native age-old culture. And now we see how negatively social media via smart phones has affected our children (and parents, too, seems to me). It is the blind leading the blind, but anyone with material wealth is so very cocksure that they know best. "Might makes right" and "wealth means intelligence" are the maxims of the day, yet both are leading us to less and less desirable outcomes. As Jamiroquai's Jay Kay said in Virtual Insanity, "I think it's time to find a new religion." That new religion requires skepticism about our societal/cultural inertias, and being open to new ideas about community and the role of compassion in all our doings, our doings' effects, and the intentions behind those doings.
bunderbunder 2y ago
I'm pretty convinced that it's ruining fun. We moved a few months ago, and even now about 90% of their toys are still packed up in boxes. No exaggeration. We didn't make a thing of it, we just quietly decided not to unpack anything by default - neither kids' stuff nor parents' stuff - and instead only unpack specific things when someone specifically wants them. Because how often do you get such a good chance to find out which of your possessions you actually care about? So far what we've seen is: 1. Less sibling conflict. 2. Less complaining about being bored. 3. More creative play. 4. Zero complaining about not enough toys.
- tartoran 2y ago
  I think kids get overwhelmed by too many toys the same way we get overwhelmed when we have too many things laying around. Every time we get a new toy for my kid we ask him to give up one of the older toys they're not playing with. It worked out pretty well so far.
- vladak 2y ago
  This method is called "packing party" (without the moving) by the [Mm]inimalists.
  - summermusic 2y ago
    In work environments it often takes the form of red tagging (https://www.learnleansigma.com/guides/5s-red-tagging/ https://www.learnleansigma.com/guides/5s-red-tagging/)
    - tivert 2y ago
      > In work environments it often takes the form of red tagging (https://www.learnleansigma.com/guides/5s-red-tagging/ https://www.learnleansigma.com/guides/5s-red-tagging/) That sounds like a terrible idea... but now I understand where the insanity of our last wiki migration came from. The rule was to not automatically migrate anything that wasn't modified in the last year. Everything else needed to be migrated manually, by hand. It was sold as a great opportunity to "clean up." We lost a lot of important design and reference documentation. My systems were fine, but if the last lead had been in charge during the transition, we'd have been fucked.
asciimov 2y ago
You’ve gotta get ahead of the problem when they’re little, get rid of toys early and often. Kid doesn’t play with it, away it goes. If the grandparents don’t like it they can keep them at their house. Exceptions made for the kids or parents favorites that aren’t broken: Barbie, Hot Wheels, Lego, etc.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  I'm very proud of our ton-of-Lego, especially my Unimog :-) And, someday, all our Lego Friends sets will find good homes.
jmyeet 2y ago
Having young relatives, I've noticed this issue. I attribute it to several factors: 1. Declining birth rates. There are more adults in a given child's life; 2. Delayed child birth. Not only are there less children per year because of this, but it also means the parents and relatives are older and tend to be more affluent; 3. Larger houses. Possessions are like a gas. They will expand to fill available space. This affects every possession type, not just toys. Where once a family of 5 might be in a 3x1 1100sq ft house, now it's a family of 3 in a 3000sq ft house; 4. Toys are generally cheaper (the article mentions this) and easier to get thanks to Amazon; 5. Increased information. You're now aware of many things you previously weren't before the Internet. So an aunt or uncle could bring a toy you've never heard of. Now? You've seen Tiktoks about everything the second it's available. So with increased means and knowledge of pretty much everything, there are fewer unfulfilled needs. 6. Guilt. People generally have to work longer hours, more jobs and harder than they did 30+ years ago. As necessary as that is, you will find people "compensating" for the lack of time with material things; 7. Children spend less time playing with each other because now everything is a "play date". We've come a long way from the TV ads of "do you know where your children are?" that would play at 10pm. Now you get arrested if your children walk to the store by themselves [1]. As much as people bemaon video games, computers and devices, it's often the only social outlet with peers children have. 8. A single device (eg console, phone, tablet) can replace the need for many toys so these things tend to collect rather than breaking and getting thrown out. [1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-moms-arrest-puts-free-range-parenting-back/story?id=116004039 https://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-moms-arrest-puts-free-rang...
- abracadaniel 2y ago
  You nailed it with all of those, from my experience. Nearly all of the toys we have were gifts. Two sets of grandparent, with not enough grandchildren to go around, and more options than ever. Even birthday parties have us struggling to fill the car with all the new crap. Plushies, barbies, Bluey merch, Gabby merch. I think my and my parent's generations can't seem to help themselves. I think there's also some compensating for being able to give the kids things you would never have been able to get. I know I'm susceptible to it as well. I bought a rock tumbler kit for them the other day, because I always wanted one as a kid. Too many overcompensating adults, too few kids to be the recipients of that compensation, too many toys out there to buy. This doesn't even touch on the scarcity/scalping of certain toys as well, which also breaks the brain in its own way. What do you mean, no one has Muffin from Bluey in stock and it's $80 on ebay? Now my brain is on a mission to find it and buy it at MSRP, when I really shouldn't care to begin with.
gwbas1c 2y ago
My kids have a doll castle. So many barbies and barbie-like dolls have shown up, that they are often laying in a pile at the bottom of the doll castle. I dread opening the doll castle because the sight of the dolls laying, stacked on the castle's floor, just brings back images I've seen of ethnic cleansing.
julienchastang 2y ago
It is a sad and colossal waste. From experience, when the kids are grown you have to decide what to do with the toys that are often half broken or with missing parts you have no idea where they ended up. As the article states, these toys come into your house whether you want them or not. You agonize about how to get rid of them in a responsible way (much more time consuming than acquiring the toy to begin with), only to find out that the landfill is pretty much the only option.
lbrito 2y ago
I'm a parent of two young kids and don't really sympathize with this. Its self-inflicted and part of a larger culture of Having More Stuff. Having lived most of my life in South America and later migrated to North America, I feel I can see that more clearly than people who grew up here. People always go over the top with anything material. Have a single child? You need a minivan. Family of four? You need a 3-level, 2000-sqft house (with the garage where you will never park your minivan, because it is full to the ceiling with clutter you never use). Toys are just another facet of this culture. As someone from the outside who has been around, I can say the rest of world is not like this. Its not particularly hard to avoid. Just buy less stuff, and donate/dispose of things you don't want or need.
- returningfory2 2y ago
  > As someone from the outside who has been around, I can say the rest of world is not like this. I agree with your general point that this is part of a broader cultural phenomenon, but I think your "rest of world" point is over extrapolating from your specific life experience in a small number of countries. I grew up in a European country and the culture around toys/stuff/etc is basically the same as the US.
  - lbrito 2y ago
    I considered adding "the rest of the world (or what I know of it)", but that is kind of implied, as no single person can plausibly have knowledge of life in every single place in the world. I lived in a few different places in Europe, and while the underlying desires that power materialism might be the same as in the US/Canada, I would very strongly argue that the practical manifestation of those desires is still at least an order of magnitude lower. Or in other words: middle-class Americans have much easier and cheaper access to industrialized goods, not to mention large housing, than most of their EU counterparts.
- gruez 2y ago
  >Have a single child? You need a minivan. Seems like hyperbole. If anything, the empirical evidence suggests the opposite. You can only fit 2 child seats in a "normal" car, so if you want 3 kids (requiring 3 child seats), you need a minivan. However, minivans are apparently so undesirable that there's a mild contraceptive effect on births, because parents keep their kid count to under 3 to avoid getting a minivan. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/731812 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/731812
toddmorey 2y ago
My advice for young parents is to make birthdays and holidays gifts of an experience. Encourage loved ones to not buy any toys and contribute to a party, train ride, bouncy castle, petting zoo... whatever it is. If you want to do any gifts at all, make the tradition 1 or 2 special gifts that the parents pick out. Of all the loot a kid acquires on their Your kids will have better, more memorable birthdays and you'll have SOOOO much less junk and clutter in the house.
sourcepluck 2y ago
If there's a social expectation of coming with a present to your nephew or cousin or mother or whoever's birthday, or at Christmas, or whatever, and you know no-one wants to have a discussion about different ways to do things... what do you do, other than buy some silly thing that ticks the required social box? Genuine question. I've tried a few little things myself, but with very little success. There just is an established set of patterns where you have to buy certain things, or else there'll be mumbling behind your back, and there doesn't seem to be a way around it in the short term (other than accepting the mumbling).
koinedad 2y ago
This is very true, it’s super stressful for kids especially when they have a messy room depending on their personality type they can be completely paralyzed by the amount of toys. Having higher quality or even just toys curated to the core desires of the child can help reduce wasteful purchases. I can’t count how many “awesome” toys I’ve donated to goodwill because my kids realized they didn’t want them after a few days, or weeks.
simne 2y ago
Is this bad or good?
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  It's a high quality problem to have.
deleted 2y ago
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analog31 2y ago
I think among all of the explanations, hoarding behavior is easily overlooked because there's a stigma associated with it. We're drowning in stuff. I think it helps to analyze and critique why we hoard. Some examples that have been helpful to my family: "We're saving it from the landfill." It just means your house becomes a landfill. "We're saving it for the poor." The poor are drowning in stuff too. A lot of the stuff collected by charities goes to the landfill, either here or in third world countries. "We're saving it for the kids." The kids are drowning in stuff too. "But these are books." I've made peace with sending books to the landfill. And tools. "Grandma gave it to us." She'll never know.
senectus1 2y ago
My household is starting to have a hoarding issue... I can recognise some of this is me... and am taking steps to fix that but my partner is a real hoarder. I'm just not sure how to deal with it.
DamnInteresting 2y ago
My parents-in-law, who live hours away, buy an enormous quantity of toys for my five-year-old. Big, obnoxious play sets. We have to frequently shuffle toys out just to have room for new stuff. On the occasions when they actually visit, they make snarky remarks about how we have so many toys for one kid. They are causing the problem and then mocking us for it. Make it stop.

66 points by gmays 2y ago

chiffre01 2y ago

Is anyone here involved in the toy industry, whether in design or another role? What’s the industry’s take on this?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pkaler 2y ago

I have a 9 month old and we are drowning in toys. We have bought very few of them. The article is clearly not written by a parent because it barely touches on Buy Nothing Groups on Facebook. We've barely bought any clothes either. They all come from Buy Nothing groups. Kids grow out of toys and clothes every 3 months. Parents are desperate to offload this stuff. And my wife has become a hoarder as have other parents in the neighbourhood. Buy Nothing groups seem to set off some sort of hoarding affliction in parents.

fecal_henge 2y ago
Try not to worry. Its not like your baby's first Christmas is just just round the corner.
riffraff 2y ago
My local group is not "buy nothing" but rather "zero waste" but yeah the amount of quasi-trash that my wife keeps bringing home ("this is broken but I'll fix it!") is crazy. A few weeks ago she managed to offload a pink salt lamp to a lady, mentioned "this is not working but should be easy to fix" and the lady replied she's just gonna feed it to some goats and it was glorious.
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  I could be totally off the mark but this sounds very much like leboncoin!
MrMcCall 2y ago
There's a big fat grey area between being a hoarder and simply not being wasteful ;-) Good luck!
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  There's not enough energy left after a regular work day to make the decisions to winnow out all the toys That . Just . Keep . Coming .
gwbas1c 2y ago
> The article is clearly not written by a parent because it barely touches on Buy Nothing Groups on Facebook. The author very clearly indicates they have children. I don't think the author wants to make it an article about themselves. Keep in mind: Toys just show up from well-meaning people. There's a lot of social momentum around gifting; I started dreading Christmas because it means a bunch of toys my kids won't play with. And, not only am I drowning in toys, I'm drowning in books too.
- em-bee 2y ago
  pretty much the only toys i get for my kids to get are lego compatible bricks. with those it doesn't make a difference if you have 1 or 10 kg of them. just add to the pile. no books in my house because we are moving to often. but i grew up in a library. my dad probably has 10-15m worth of bookshelves. from my granddad we inherited 3 or 4 times as much. but they were both collectors, curating their collections with care. still, sorting through those books to figure out whats valuable is a lifetime occupation. and i can see how a lot of books can be overwhelming if you are not into that. a year ago i heard about someone passing away leaving behind a house with a collection of 75000 books. the cost to sort through them would be higher than the value of the collection, so instead it all goes to a landfill because i a not even sure it can be recycled or the cost of getting it recycled was to much too.
  - sricks3 2y ago
    There are a few types of toys that my wife and I are still ok with getting and Lego is one of them. She's started using the phrase "more really is more" to describe the category. Basically, it's systems where you build something and the more you have, the more things you can do: Lego, Brio, Magna-Tiles, Hot Wheels track, etc. Even things like Pokemon cards (if your kid actually plays the game) can fall into this. You do have to be careful not to end up with too many of these systems, especially really similar ones. We're also still ok with getting books. We have a few too many for our shelf space, but at their current ages, our kids are aging out of books about as quickly as they receive new ones. I just need to do a better job of giving away the old ones more regularly.
- 2y ago
milesvp 2y ago
Probably has something to do with the price of zero. The concept keeps showing up in random feeds for me, and it’s something both marketers and behavioral economists like to talk about. It seems free short circuits a lot of our normal cognitive pathways. That said, I learned an interesting trick years ago. If you’re trying to get rid of junk, leaving it on the side of the road with a free sign is not as effective as using a sign with a slightly more than nominal amount. $25 used to be the sweet spot, $50 might be better today. Probably depends on the thing. Make it look like they’re getting a deal. Items tend to disappear after that, though I did once have someone knock and pay.

deleted 2y ago

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_fat_santa 2y ago

> Shelves overflowing with cars and blocks and action figures can be just as stressful for kids as they are for parents. Sometimes “kids don’t play with anything, because there’s just too many options,” said Sarah Davis I find it quite interesting that "choice fatigue" is found just about everywhere, from what show to watch on Netflix to what toy your kid picks up. Semi related anecdote but I recently picked up a Steam Deck with the intention of emulating PS2 games. One thing I was very intentional about is to not load it up right away with every game imaginable but rather, go one game at a time, much like I used to when I still had to buy these games at the store. I use the Deck quite often and attribute much of that to the fact that I limited my game options, as if I loaded up every game I could possibly play then I would just drown in choices.

matthewfcarlson 2y ago
I've been debating getting a steam deck for a few years now and getting close to pulling the trigger. That's good advice, thank you
- koinedad 2y ago
  Steamdeck is awesome. Just don’t sign up for the wishlist sale emails . I had to turn off notifications because I was buying way more games than I could play.
Apocryphon 2y ago
I feel the same way about books.
frereubu 2y ago
Sounds like mindfulness - set your intention before you use something and keep checking in to make sure you're not getting distracted (by something other than the game!)
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
Yep. Currently going through choice fatigue in trying to decide what program to use for designing things that will be 3D printed. There's also a seemingly endless number of guides to help you choose, each with its own set of reasons, which only expands the choice landscape even further.

duxup 2y ago

Toys are cheap, many last a long time, and they're handed down / given away regularly. Even when we bought toys we got them at a second hand store and they were crazy cheap. By the time I had a second child we didn't "need" anymore toys, but we still got them for birthdays, holidays and so on.

darrylb42 2y ago

Not to mention the really cheap plastic stuff given away in gift bags when it is someone's birthday. Small non-functional yo-yo's balls with paddle. etc. Since you can't give food or candy for fear of nuts. For things like LEGO they are mostly specific sets, so they get built and displayed like models by my kids. Rarely to they build random stuff like I did when I was little, with only a small amount of LEGO.

riffraff 2y ago
When did gift bags at parties become a thing? When I was a kid the social contract was "I host the party you give me a present, and next time you get one". When my kids come home with gift bags I feel like screaming.
- munificent 2y ago
  I think the trend of gift bags comes from a good place. Parents saw that when the birthday kid gets everything, it's easy for that to become a lesson in selfishness and Main Character Syndrome. Having the birthday kid also give gifts to the guests helps make it feel like a shared experience where everyone is important. The plastic junk is just collateral damage.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    i have the impression that in china gift giving for birthdays is less common (in general most gifts are red envelopes with money anyways). as a consequence there is no expectation for kids to bring a gift when they attend a party. as a parent i would make that explicit, in order to be inclusive, i would ask/demand that no presents be brought to the party. any friends or family who do want to give a present should do that in private before or after the party, and all present are also to be opened after the party when the guests are gone. that avoids a number of problems. the birthday kid can focus on the party and the guests instead of being focused on the presents. any disappointment about the "wrong" presents is hidden from the giver. givers won't be embarrassed or judged in front of the party if their present is somehow inferior to others. or givers can't brag about their cool present, and also the kids can't show off what cool stuff they got. really wrong presents can be ignored, returned, passed on without any fuss....

digging 2y ago

Reminds me of going through my old toy chest with my parents. Most of what I found I just tossed - my mom wanted to offload to goodwill but I was sure few of them were worth it. The items I wanted to keep were mostly either silly figures of animals I like (old-school dinosaurs, etc), or creative stuff like Bionicles. In fact, I took home the Bionicles and spent a few weekends actually playing with them, creating new figures. I'm certainly not neurotypical, but I feel that a decent barometer for toys that will truly engage a child is "Could a creative adult also enjoy this?" I have some young children in my life and agree the landscape of toys-and-their-ads is insane these days. Especially with the crisp unboxing videos, it's so hard not to want to get the weird (and, truthfully, often quite creative, on the designer's part) stuff that's coming out. I sympathize with parents; it's never going to be easy to say no even once you've identified that a badly desired toy is actually going to be a waste of money 6 hours after purchase.

matthewfcarlson 2y ago
> "Could a creative adult also enjoy this?" That's a very good metric. I've had friends ask me when I come up with an activity or toy, "how did you think of x?" The answer is "it sounded fun to me if I was a kid."
bluGill 2y ago
Many of your odd toys don't even meet modern safety standards and so should be either tossed or put in a collectors display cabinet where kids won't touch them. Sure we survived, but that doesn't make them toys safe.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  Oh no, "You'll shoot your eye out kid"
  - mikestew 2y ago
    You jest, but if that kid weren’t wearing glasses… I was thinking more of lawn darts. One look at those, and you just know that one is eventually going to end up in the back of someone’s skull.

widowlark 2y ago

I own an Analogue Pocket, which is an FPGA system for the gameboy color (and more). I have found that by forcing myself to just play the inserted cartridge instead of games loaded on the the memory card, I have a high attention span for the game and can play for longer periods.

matthewfcarlson 2y ago

My own experience, but I've been very happy with the level of toys I have. It feels manageable and I can pick up all toys within 5 minutes (depending on how scattered they got). However, whenever kids come over to my house (particularly slightly older children- 6+), their first comment almost without fail is "where are all the toys?" I feel like our choice has been fairly intentional.

efields 2y ago

The biggest takeaway for me is that toys are 4x cheaper to make than they were 20 years ago, adjusted for inflation. So it's just easier to buy more of them. As another poster mentions, this article fails to dig into the Buy Nothing communities, or even Facebook Marketplace. We actively try to get rid of the kids stuff as they outgrow them, and these are the two places we first hit up.

readthenotes1 2y ago
I talked with the parents of a 30-year-old family member. They said their child had overflowing toys 29 years ago...
PrismCrystal 2y ago
Toys I remember from the 1980s had already outsourced production to Taiwan. I assume that things soon moved to China, but it is astonishing to think that Chinese labor could have made already cheap Asian production so much cheaper. So, I assume that the drop in production costs is driven by some kind of industrial process improvements?

riffraff 2y ago

It's interesting that the article keeps referring to stuff kids see in tv or YouTube. But my kids don't watch TV with ads and don't watch YouTube unboxing videos, and my house is still too full of toys. I have to keep reminding my friends and relatives to not get them more stuff. Toys are just too easy too available.

carlosjobim 2y ago

The article is not talking about the real cause: There is an ongoing extermination of young people through low birth rates. Any child today is inheriting toys from several childless uncles and aunts and friends of parents, or getting presents from them.

analog31 2y ago
Indeed, same thing with housewares. How many sets of wedding china does anybody need?
mmh0000 2y ago
I know the "media" talks all about poor birth rates and all. But, there are more children now in the US[1] than there ever has been: [1] https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Do these statistics correspond with what you observe in everyday life? There is a reason why Lego has shifted focus from the child market to the adult market. But I admit that declining birthrates is probably not the only reason. There are decades of mass produced toys that get inherited/reused, and as the article points out; mass produced goods are cheaper than ever, especially plastic stuff like toys.
  - mmh0000 2y ago
    Yes. All I can assume (by making an ass out of me) is that you live in a big city. Come to suburbia, there are children everywhere, all the time. As for the lego thing. Yeah, just take a moment to think this through. Lego has become absurdly popular with adult nerds. Adult nerds have money. Children do not have money. If your company was previously marketing to children. But, suddenly had a large influx of interest from people with money. Who would you market to? Are you implying "The Government" is lying? Because now we're entering crazy-land and I won't discuss that further.

MrMcCall 2y ago

It looks like the parents in the article are not teaching their children that each kind of toy should be put away before the next toy gets brought out to play with. Teaching children that mixing all one's toys up creates an unusable chaos is a good lesson for how to (not) organize one's work environment, room's clothing, kitchen area, etc. Installing a sense of order is IMO a valuable lesson for young people. As a family with a lot of Lego (both daughter's Friends stuff and son's Technics and Ninjago), they have put in signifcant work to keep it sorted so that it remains usable. I understand that most parents are not so diligent (time constraints for working parents are brutal), but our primary advantage is that the kids have never had their own tvs or internet-connected devices (except for son's chess computer which is in our living room). Not having on-demand media has left them needing to choose their own activities, which includes asking to watch something specific within our shared media computer. What is nice about this is that we almost never have to ask either of them to clean/organize their areas, because they have learned the Marie Kondo-style kind of joy in keeping your area organized. And, yes, our daughter read and loved that book. [Side note: not having on-demand media also helps develop their joy of reading, though it was more difficult for our son than daughter.]

bunderbunder 2y ago
But can we maybe for once ease off on the blatantly moralizing at parents? In my circle of friends and family, every single parent wants to uphold this standard. The only ones who have actually succeeded in consistently maintaining it also have a very authoritarian parenting style. Everyone else has settled on compromising to various degrees.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Morality is what keeps one race of people from enslaving other folks; keeps someone from robbing or killing another, and many other negative attitudes and behaviors. We human beings are the only moral creatures around here, being able to learn from our mistakes, evaluate the results of our actions, and change how we go about things. This world absolutely needs more moralizing, not less, but not self-righteous I'm-better-than-you kinds of pompous bullsh_t, but just results-based, impartial discussion of what the best outcomes are and what the best methods are to achieving them. Regarding parenting, one has to find the middle way, being neither abusive nor too slack. The important thing to understand is that children are intrinsically selfish, and that we have to teach them empathy and kindness, and -- most importantly -- that they have selfish impulses they must resist, in order for the society as a whole to function its best. No, most people do not have the level of understanding about human nature to properly educate their children. Not having learned how to live, parents are now doing their best, but have failed to question the inertia of our world techno culture, that is overlaid on their native age-old culture. And now we see how negatively social media via smart phones has affected our children (and parents, too, seems to me). It is the blind leading the blind, but anyone with material wealth is so very cocksure that they know best. "Might makes right" and "wealth means intelligence" are the maxims of the day, yet both are leading us to less and less desirable outcomes. As Jamiroquai's Jay Kay said in Virtual Insanity, "I think it's time to find a new religion." That new religion requires skepticism about our societal/cultural inertias, and being open to new ideas about community and the role of compassion in all our doings, our doings' effects, and the intentions behind those doings.

bunderbunder 2y ago

I'm pretty convinced that it's ruining fun. We moved a few months ago, and even now about 90% of their toys are still packed up in boxes. No exaggeration. We didn't make a thing of it, we just quietly decided not to unpack anything by default - neither kids' stuff nor parents' stuff - and instead only unpack specific things when someone specifically wants them. Because how often do you get such a good chance to find out which of your possessions you actually care about? So far what we've seen is: 1. Less sibling conflict. 2. Less complaining about being bored. 3. More creative play. 4. Zero complaining about not enough toys.

tartoran 2y ago
I think kids get overwhelmed by too many toys the same way we get overwhelmed when we have too many things laying around. Every time we get a new toy for my kid we ask him to give up one of the older toys they're not playing with. It worked out pretty well so far.
vladak 2y ago
This method is called "packing party" (without the moving) by the [Mm]inimalists.
- summermusic 2y ago
  In work environments it often takes the form of red tagging (https://www.learnleansigma.com/guides/5s-red-tagging/ https://www.learnleansigma.com/guides/5s-red-tagging/)
  - tivert 2y ago
    > In work environments it often takes the form of red tagging (https://www.learnleansigma.com/guides/5s-red-tagging/ https://www.learnleansigma.com/guides/5s-red-tagging/) That sounds like a terrible idea... but now I understand where the insanity of our last wiki migration came from. The rule was to not automatically migrate anything that wasn't modified in the last year. Everything else needed to be migrated manually, by hand. It was sold as a great opportunity to "clean up." We lost a lot of important design and reference documentation. My systems were fine, but if the last lead had been in charge during the transition, we'd have been fucked.

asciimov 2y ago

You’ve gotta get ahead of the problem when they’re little, get rid of toys early and often. Kid doesn’t play with it, away it goes. If the grandparents don’t like it they can keep them at their house. Exceptions made for the kids or parents favorites that aren’t broken: Barbie, Hot Wheels, Lego, etc.

MrMcCall 2y ago
I'm very proud of our ton-of-Lego, especially my Unimog :-) And, someday, all our Lego Friends sets will find good homes.

jmyeet 2y ago

Having young relatives, I've noticed this issue. I attribute it to several factors: 1. Declining birth rates. There are more adults in a given child's life; 2. Delayed child birth. Not only are there less children per year because of this, but it also means the parents and relatives are older and tend to be more affluent; 3. Larger houses. Possessions are like a gas. They will expand to fill available space. This affects every possession type, not just toys. Where once a family of 5 might be in a 3x1 1100sq ft house, now it's a family of 3 in a 3000sq ft house; 4. Toys are generally cheaper (the article mentions this) and easier to get thanks to Amazon; 5. Increased information. You're now aware of many things you previously weren't before the Internet. So an aunt or uncle could bring a toy you've never heard of. Now? You've seen Tiktoks about everything the second it's available. So with increased means and knowledge of pretty much everything, there are fewer unfulfilled needs. 6. Guilt. People generally have to work longer hours, more jobs and harder than they did 30+ years ago. As necessary as that is, you will find people "compensating" for the lack of time with material things; 7. Children spend less time playing with each other because now everything is a "play date". We've come a long way from the TV ads of "do you know where your children are?" that would play at 10pm. Now you get arrested if your children walk to the store by themselves [1]. As much as people bemaon video games, computers and devices, it's often the only social outlet with peers children have. 8. A single device (eg console, phone, tablet) can replace the need for many toys so these things tend to collect rather than breaking and getting thrown out. [1]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-moms-arrest-puts-free-range-parenting-back/story?id=116004039 https://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-moms-arrest-puts-free-rang...

abracadaniel 2y ago
You nailed it with all of those, from my experience. Nearly all of the toys we have were gifts. Two sets of grandparent, with not enough grandchildren to go around, and more options than ever. Even birthday parties have us struggling to fill the car with all the new crap. Plushies, barbies, Bluey merch, Gabby merch. I think my and my parent's generations can't seem to help themselves. I think there's also some compensating for being able to give the kids things you would never have been able to get. I know I'm susceptible to it as well. I bought a rock tumbler kit for them the other day, because I always wanted one as a kid. Too many overcompensating adults, too few kids to be the recipients of that compensation, too many toys out there to buy. This doesn't even touch on the scarcity/scalping of certain toys as well, which also breaks the brain in its own way. What do you mean, no one has Muffin from Bluey in stock and it's $80 on ebay? Now my brain is on a mission to find it and buy it at MSRP, when I really shouldn't care to begin with.

gwbas1c 2y ago

My kids have a doll castle. So many barbies and barbie-like dolls have shown up, that they are often laying in a pile at the bottom of the doll castle. I dread opening the doll castle because the sight of the dolls laying, stacked on the castle's floor, just brings back images I've seen of ethnic cleansing.

julienchastang 2y ago

It is a sad and colossal waste. From experience, when the kids are grown you have to decide what to do with the toys that are often half broken or with missing parts you have no idea where they ended up. As the article states, these toys come into your house whether you want them or not. You agonize about how to get rid of them in a responsible way (much more time consuming than acquiring the toy to begin with), only to find out that the landfill is pretty much the only option.

lbrito 2y ago

I'm a parent of two young kids and don't really sympathize with this. Its self-inflicted and part of a larger culture of Having More Stuff. Having lived most of my life in South America and later migrated to North America, I feel I can see that more clearly than people who grew up here. People always go over the top with anything material. Have a single child? You need a minivan. Family of four? You need a 3-level, 2000-sqft house (with the garage where you will never park your minivan, because it is full to the ceiling with clutter you never use). Toys are just another facet of this culture. As someone from the outside who has been around, I can say the rest of world is not like this. Its not particularly hard to avoid. Just buy less stuff, and donate/dispose of things you don't want or need.

returningfory2 2y ago
> As someone from the outside who has been around, I can say the rest of world is not like this. I agree with your general point that this is part of a broader cultural phenomenon, but I think your "rest of world" point is over extrapolating from your specific life experience in a small number of countries. I grew up in a European country and the culture around toys/stuff/etc is basically the same as the US.
- lbrito 2y ago
  I considered adding "the rest of the world (or what I know of it)", but that is kind of implied, as no single person can plausibly have knowledge of life in every single place in the world. I lived in a few different places in Europe, and while the underlying desires that power materialism might be the same as in the US/Canada, I would very strongly argue that the practical manifestation of those desires is still at least an order of magnitude lower. Or in other words: middle-class Americans have much easier and cheaper access to industrialized goods, not to mention large housing, than most of their EU counterparts.
gruez 2y ago
>Have a single child? You need a minivan. Seems like hyperbole. If anything, the empirical evidence suggests the opposite. You can only fit 2 child seats in a "normal" car, so if you want 3 kids (requiring 3 child seats), you need a minivan. However, minivans are apparently so undesirable that there's a mild contraceptive effect on births, because parents keep their kid count to under 3 to avoid getting a minivan. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/731812 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/731812

toddmorey 2y ago

My advice for young parents is to make birthdays and holidays gifts of an experience. Encourage loved ones to not buy any toys and contribute to a party, train ride, bouncy castle, petting zoo... whatever it is. If you want to do any gifts at all, make the tradition 1 or 2 special gifts that the parents pick out. Of all the loot a kid acquires on their Your kids will have better, more memorable birthdays and you'll have SOOOO much less junk and clutter in the house.

sourcepluck 2y ago

If there's a social expectation of coming with a present to your nephew or cousin or mother or whoever's birthday, or at Christmas, or whatever, and you know no-one wants to have a discussion about different ways to do things... what do you do, other than buy some silly thing that ticks the required social box? Genuine question. I've tried a few little things myself, but with very little success. There just is an established set of patterns where you have to buy certain things, or else there'll be mumbling behind your back, and there doesn't seem to be a way around it in the short term (other than accepting the mumbling).

koinedad 2y ago

This is very true, it’s super stressful for kids especially when they have a messy room depending on their personality type they can be completely paralyzed by the amount of toys. Having higher quality or even just toys curated to the core desires of the child can help reduce wasteful purchases. I can’t count how many “awesome” toys I’ve donated to goodwill because my kids realized they didn’t want them after a few days, or weeks.

simne 2y ago

Is this bad or good?

rufus_foreman 2y ago
It's a high quality problem to have.

deleted 2y ago

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analog31 2y ago

I think among all of the explanations, hoarding behavior is easily overlooked because there's a stigma associated with it. We're drowning in stuff. I think it helps to analyze and critique why we hoard. Some examples that have been helpful to my family: "We're saving it from the landfill." It just means your house becomes a landfill. "We're saving it for the poor." The poor are drowning in stuff too. A lot of the stuff collected by charities goes to the landfill, either here or in third world countries. "We're saving it for the kids." The kids are drowning in stuff too. "But these are books." I've made peace with sending books to the landfill. And tools. "Grandma gave it to us." She'll never know.

senectus1 2y ago

My household is starting to have a hoarding issue... I can recognise some of this is me... and am taking steps to fix that but my partner is a real hoarder. I'm just not sure how to deal with it.

DamnInteresting 2y ago

My parents-in-law, who live hours away, buy an enormous quantity of toys for my five-year-old. Big, obnoxious play sets. We have to frequently shuffle toys out just to have room for new stuff. On the occasions when they actually visit, they make snarky remarks about how we have so many toys for one kid. They are causing the problem and then mocking us for it. Make it stop.