[pkaler]

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.

[riffraff]

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]

I could be totally off the mark but this sounds very much like leboncoin!

[gwbas1c]

> 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]

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]

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.

[sricks3]

Yes! I've run out of ways to tell MY parents not to get toys for my kids for Christmas/birthdays. I can ask directly for no physical things; I can suggest tickets to shows or evens, memberships to museums or zoos, etc; I can point out every time they come over that there's not enough space for the things we already have; I can tell them what sorts of clothes the kids could use instead. They're still going to get each kid a "showstopper" (toy workbench, Big Wheel, something physically large) plus several cheap plastic trinkets... plus the clothes.

And that's just my parents. I can politely talk to them about not getting physical things for my kids, but then there's all of the extended family that loves to get them big, cheap plastic stuff, too. I know they're trying to be generous and don't really understand the fallout, but I'm starting to reconsider the whole "it's the thought that counts" idea.

I need to do a better job of helping the kids periodically go through and give stuff away, but 1) try explaining to a 3-year-old why giving away your toys is a good thing, and 2) the influx of new things always seems to outstrip the rate at which I can find time to get rid of stuff.

[fecal_henge]

Try not to worry. Its not like your baby's first Christmas is just just round the corner.

[milesvp]

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.

[MrMcCall]

There's a big fat grey area between being a hoarder and simply not being wasteful ;-)

Good luck!

[readthenotes1]

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 .