As your kids start to grow up you’ll find yourself in a difficult situation. When they start to outgrow all of their toys and clothes and you start replacing them, you need to get rid of the old stuff. That’s often easier said than done because every single item holds memories. It can be difficult to part with any of it but you’ve got to be practical unless you want to have boxes and boxes full of stuff by the time they leave home. To help make the transition a bit easier we’ve put together a few tips on how to choose what to keep and what to chuck.

Homemade Gifts

Homemade gifts are one thing that everybody should keep. If family members have knitted them outfits, that’s more special than something you bought from a store. The same goes for any gifts that the kids have made for you. You can get rid of other stuff but anything that they’ve put their time and effort into should go in the keep pile. If you’ve got a lot of this stuff, you can take it to a local self storage facility and keep it there so it doesn’t take up too much room in the house. The homemade gifts are the things that you’ll remember in years to come, not the stuff you’ve just bought from a store.

Clothing

With the exception of the homemade stuff, you’re probably going to have to get rid of most of the clothes. The kids grow out of them so fast you’re going to have piles of it by the time they get older. However, if you want to keep some of those memories without taking up way too much space, why not consider making a quilt? You can get your favourite pieces of clothing and take a cutting of them, then stitch them together into a quilt. That way you’ve still got those great memories without having to clutter up the house with hundreds of onesies.

Toys

Toys don’t have much of a lifespan these days. They’ll either get broken or the next big thing comes out and your kids aren’t bothered about the old stuff anymore. That means that toys can build up very quickly so you’ve got to be strict about what you get rid of. The best way to go about it is to have a box for toys and only allow the kids to keep whatever will fit in there. They can make the decisions about what goes and you can stop it from spiralling out of control. When they’re much older and you’ve got all of those toys left over, what should you keep? Most of their toys are going to be cheap plastic toys that aren’t exactly sentimental so they can go. Keep anything that’s actually practical and get rid of the rest. You should also keep a few of their favourite toys, particularly teddy bears or nice wooden ones. They’ll be far nicer keepsakes than a plastic robot toy.

One of the biggest surprises about parenthood is just how much stuff they produce, but using this handy guide, you can keep on top of it.