How many toys are too many toys?

I don't know but I'm pretty sure we exceeded it years ago

They have too much when they find something they forgot they even had.

They have too much when a 30 gallon tote is full to the top.

They have too much when you have to dedicate a room just to their toys and you've run out of room.

I have several totes in the basement full of Legos and hot wheels. I want to get rid of the hot wheels. The last time I tried, my mother took the tote away and called me a bad mom for attempting to get rid of something they love. Um, they're teenagers. The one tote is actually one of several between my house, their dad's, and my parents'. I don't think they'll miss it. Plus my dad has over a thousand in his office on display. Guess who gets all those? Yeah, getting rid of one tote is nothing but I'm a shitty mom.

I totally disagree with this statement.

What's wrong with having a playroom? It keeps all the toys contained in one space and gives the kids an area to play.

No toys in the way in the rest of the house. It seems like the perfect solution to me. No toys out in the living room. A door that I can hide a mess if someone drops by unexpectedly. Never feeling like tbe rest of the house isn't picked up.

I wouldn't have kids and not have a playroom.

My youngest has too many - and has more than she would if I were solely in charge. But I'm not solely in charge and marriage involves compromises. When compromising between a pack rat/hoarder and a purger...the purger rarely wins

And how do you decide which toys go in which room?

If you have 3 little boys and one tub of Lego who gets it?
If you have 3 little boys and one train table?

It makes more sense to me that all the toys go in the toy room so all the kids can play with them.

I understand that everyone's house works differently.

I was just really put off by the way you first phrased your judgment about a playroom.

I disagree. I live in a tri-level house and the kid's bedrooms are small. When my two oldest were younger, we had a space in our unfinished basement. Nothing fancy, just a place to spread out and play with things that take up room like Fisher Price Little People, Legos, GeoTrax, and Barbies.

Also, my kids were sneaky. Toys in the room, and they would stay up later. For my daughter, I had to threaten to take her books away.
My youngest does not play with toys; only balls. He doesn't need a playroom.

DD has way too much stuff again at the moment. She did a pretty good job deciding what to get rid of herself last fall when I was getting stuff together for a consignment sale. I told her she could have all the money for whatever (toys) sold, and she purged way better than I expected she would. Almost all of it sold too. I couldn't do the sale this spring and we really needed to, so now we're feeling a little overrun.

Our house has a formal livingroom but we're not formal livingroom type people so that space wasn't being used. It kind of morphed into the "toy room" where a lot of her stuff lives. Her dollhouse is in there, the McQueen racetrack table is in there and some bins of her toys on a shelf plus some furniture and our piano. She plays in there sometimes, but usually brings what she wants from there to play with in our family room where we all hang out and then puts it back after a while. I don't have a problem with that generally. I wish that room wasn't at the front of the house though because it's one of the first things you see when you come in. Even though it's usually picked up and tidy, it doesn't have a door and there's no way to add one and it's just an odd combination of formal wall finishes, draperies, etc. and kid stuff.

As for the point of kids having all of their stuff in their room, that is great in theory but wouldn't work out all that well for us. When we upgraded her crib/toddler bed, we ended up getting a queen size 4-poster from a friend for free along with a matching armoire. We figured it was a bed she wouldn't outgrow, plus the price was right. Those two things take up a lot of space. She still needed a second dresser for her out of season clothes because the armoire has very shallow drawers that only have room for clothes that are in season, and with a bookshelf in there too there isn't much space for anything else, much less to really play in there. We thought if she ever has a sleepover, the queen bed is plenty big for two kids to sleep, plus if we ever had more company than our guest room will hold she can always sleep in our room with us on the air bed for a night or two and someone could sleep in her bed if needed. It works for us.

We didn't have a playroom and didn't need one. When the kids wanted to play, they played in their room or brought something out to play with for the day. If a friend came over, they took out what they were going to play with and then put it back. For us, it encouraged our kids to keep the house neat and it limited the toys they had. They had a fair amount of toys for the outdoors as well as indoors. Every Christmas vacation and birthday season the toys were pruned. I always encouraged my family to get my kids savings bonds for holidays instead of toys. It helped. My friend had a big toy room for her daughter, but I never saw the need or had the desire to have one.

Outdoor toys of balls and bikes and the waterhose too.

If they aren't able to put them neatly away, then there are too many. That's my philosophy, anyway.

Once the kids were old enough to clean up on their own, I wanted the quantity of toys be such that they could easily fill bins or shelves with them and not have some left over, leaving the kids wondering where to put them, or deciding to just open a door and cram them all in.

This is nothing new. I grew up in a family with 5 children. We had a toy room in the basement with shag carpeting. Our barbie house and doll cupboard were made by my dad.  My parents were far from rich. I mostly had hand me down toys that were from the 70's when I grew up in the 80's. It was a way to control the clutter when 4 of us were sharing rooms with other siblings. Two twin beds, a shared dresser, and 1 night stand makes zero room for kids.

Now I live in a house where 2 of my bedrooms with 2 twin beds would be all that fits. My youngest has Autism and isn't like other kids. He does not play with toys. He does not have an imagination. He does not talk. So no, he does not need a playroom. I keep trying to get him to play.

My two oldest had play dough, art supplies, coloring books, and plain pieces of paper to draw to their hearts content. They made elaborate set ups of Little People toys and made up stories of what was happening. A House Hunters episode of which dollhouse does the family pick, a news cast with Webkinz complete with a newsroom set up (they used crates) They still managed to have fun with empty cardboard boxes, collect rocks, and play in mud.

When I was very small, before we moved to the house with the family/play room, we lived in a house where I shared my room with 2 siblings. There was a walk-in closet that we used as a playroom.

Outdoors is marvelous and we spent an enormous amount of time there, but sometimes it's negative degrees outside, and an indoor space is nice. Plus, I unfortunately then, and to this day, have very severe seasonal allergies. When the seasons/weather first changed, I would need to stay inside. Also, every time they moved the lawn, I would need to stay inside. So outdoors wasn't always available.

But I seem to be failing to understand how a room with less furniture, less rules, and more space can hamper creativity. Our walk-in closet did house our clothes as well as our toys, so it was crowded, so when ever the weather was warm enough, we used a 3 season screened in porch instead for indoor play, and we loved that. So much room to spread out and really go nuts with whatever make-believe we were inventing that day. We were wildly creative out there and we would have loved it we could have used that as a year round playroom.

When it is difficult to clean up the room and find places to store everything, there's too much. I don't expect children to keep their play spaces pristine, but at the end of the day they should be able to make a reasonable effort to keep the floor clear.