Are you striving to adopt a more minimalist lifestyle and with the holiday season right around the corner, are you feeling apprehension over navigating the excess amount of toys? Don’t worry! I will ease your anxiety by offering a few tips on how to approach the holidays with a minimalist and environmentally-friendly mindset — how to de-clutter before and after the holidays, how to carefully and mindfully select items (and experiences) to include on a wish list and how to get your loved ones on board (especially those grandparents, who just LOVE to spoil their grandchildren).

1. Before the holiday season, purge and donate as many toys, clothes and books as you can in preparation for the new items: If your child is old enough to understand, go through her belongings together and ask her what she wants to keep and what she wants to give away. Empower her to make her own choices. A great way to foster compassion and giving, is to talk about how her old toys, clothes and books will find a new home for a child who doesn’t have as much as we do. You can even have her bring a bag of items for donation to her school/daycare, church or even to your neighbors. She will learn the gift of giving as opposed to only receiving and therefore, wanting more — a great value to instill!
2. The 4 gift rule: This is a common minimalist-oriented gift rule for Christmas and it can also be applied to birthdays and other celebratory occasions. Get each of your kids one item they need, one item they want, one item they can wear, and one item they can read. One item might fall into 2 or more of these categories. For example, our daughter needs a winter coat and snow boots for Christmas — that is something she can wear AND that she needs. Sometimes, she will tell me straight up what she wants. For instance, the other day I had on earrings and she asked me if she could have some. Her ears are not pierced yet but I will be getting her cute clip-on earrings. She also seems to be in a pony/unicorn phase so my family could buy her a little pony with accessories to play with. Obviously, books are great, educational items and for bilingual families like ours, ask for books in the target/minority language so that the bilingual parent can read to her children in the given language. For the environmentally conscious families, try to avoid including plastic toys on your list. Instead, choose toys made from sustainable or recycled materials. As far as wrapping gifts, try to use cloth bags and learn how to use the Japanese fabric-wrapping method called Furoshiki. I save the Amazon cloth bags from previous Christmases and reuse them each year. I do know that little ones love to tear that wrapping paper so if you must, go for the recycled or ecofriendly wrapping paper (an example is Wrappily).
3. Make a specific list for family members who love to spoil your children aka the grandparents: Yes, we all know that the grandparents’ main role is to spoil their grandchildren much to their delight. I wouldn’t want to take that pleasure away from them even though my husband and I continually stress that our children don’t need more toys than what they have. But for those stubborn grandparents and aunts, uncles and such, if they ask you what they can buy for your child, create a list of gifts (I recommend the Amazon gift or wish list) that you carefully select and share that list with them.
4. Emphasize gratitude for what we already have in our lives (non-material things) and the value of experience-based gifts: Here in America — and more generally speaking, in capitalist societies — we are sold the illusion that the more you have, the happier you will be. As a result of this “American dream” ideal, people here work extra hard to afford the huge home, the fanciest car, and expensive material possessions. As a parent, I don’t want my children to literally “buy” into this unsustainable and unhealthy way of life for them and for our planet. I want them to show gratitude for what they do have — as in, a loving family and friends, access to education and the ability to travel. A house, a backyard and a car, to me, are luxuries and I want them to learn about the value of experiences over material possessions — experiences create long lasting memories and don’t end up in the landfill! When they write a letter to Santa this Christmas, ask your children to write a thank you note first to express gratitude for the people and pets in their lives and for food and shelter. Then, they can write a few items under each category I laid out under the 4 gift rule. And they can also include experience-based gifts (even though it’s not as fun to open that sort of gift on Xmas day!). I am referring to day trips i.e. going to the zoo, museum, botanical garden, a musical etc or if you are fortunate to be able to, traveling and discovering new places and countries. Why not ask for a monetary contribution to an upcoming trip for either the flight, lodging or even luggage for your toddler? Or ask for a membership to a zoo or a ticket to go see a musical on Broadway.
5. After the holiday season, go through all the gifts, decide what you want to put on display in the toy room and what you want to store away for later: A good rule of thumb here is for every new gift your child has received, an old toy from that same category is thrown away if it’s broken or donated either prior to the holiday season or after. If you don’t want to donate cherished toys, consider keeping them in a keep-sake box for your children to give to their future children. You can also store them away and take it out when you go through toy rotation, especially if the toy becomes age-appropriate for your second born baby/toddler. This is why I don’t have a lot of ideas of new toys for our 15 month old toddler — we kept Emilia’s baby toys and Leo can now benefit from them. Why not re-gift old toys in good shape rather than buying new toys for your second born? Let’s face it — small children outgrow toys so quickly as they develop new skills. Wait to see what they gravitate towards and you can make your next wish list based on their growing interests. For help on how to create a play room using the Montessori approach of toy display, read my post here.

Happy Holidays and remember, don’t stress out over gifts. What really matters is spending quality time with your loved ones, eating delicious food and sharing long-lasting memories. This is especially important for families who have been apart for so long due to the pandemic.