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.
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.
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.
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: