Kara Jung: With the rise of throwaway culture and cheap toys, family homes are overflowing with plastic crap

Fed up with a house overflowing with plastic trinkets collected by her indifferent offspring, Kara Jung embarked on a Manic Marie Kondo Crap Cleanse. Here’s how it went.

• Are you getting the most from your Advertiser subscription?
• Kids can handle losing. Give them some credit

It was the mid 1980s and I’d just been given a sheet of Strawberry Shortcake scratch-and-sniff stickers.

I remember cherishing each one, not rushing to peel or scratch, but to use them wisely for these were a rare treasure.

One went in my lockup diary, one on a handwritten letter, one to join the small motley collection on the side of my chest of drawers.

Fast-forward a few decades and my daughter has thousands of stickers — sheets of them. She will stick whole sheets on scraps of paper with abandon. She merely shrugged when a large sheet of Spider-Man stickers was ruined after being left in the rain.

The once-precious stickers now devalued thanks to a great scourge of our time — too much stuff.

These days, children don’t have to save their pocket money to buy a toy.

A recent trip to the hardware store saw mine arrive home with stamps, stickers and balloons, while a trip to the doctor resulted in a lollipop and book.

They returned from a visit to a friend’s place with a plastic jewel, a clay rose and other baubles — those friends, too, so awash with stuff, they were happy to part with a few.

The school fundraiser came with toy prizes and there are stickers and more trinkets for students who sit on the top of the best-learner chart each week. There are participation ribbons for all instead of medals for the winner and prizes in pass the parcel every time the music stops, sending the wrong message that losing is bad while simultaneously devaluing medals and prizes.

Then there’s the pester power at every checkout and supermarket offers of plastic knick-knacks with every grocery shop.

And yet, it was only a day or so into the school holidays when the whine began: “I’m bored! What can we do?”

“Be bored and then be creative,” I whined back, tripping over a plastic Hawaiian lei, broken tiara, a small toy camel and unicorn eraser whose head had mysteriously disappeared.

“You have a million toys — surely one of them is worth playing with.”

But perhaps that’s the problem. When you have new stuff pouring in all the time, it is difficult to develop a real regard for any of it. Stuff becomes devalued. Stickers, just stickers to be stuck and thrown out, rather than cherished.

Forget the myth of a modest box of treasured toys in a Pinterest-worthy wicker basket.

With the rise of today’s throwaway culture and abundance of cheap toys, there are family homes around the country overflowing with plastic crap.

Ours is no different, despite some attempts otherwise.

We have done several birthday parties where our children have collected a gold coin for charity rather than gifts.

We generally say “no” to the checkout pester and try to stick to the rule that we’ll only spend money on new toys for birthdays or Christmas.

And still it piles up.

And so began my Manic Marie Kondo Crap Cleanse.

I was ruthless. I filled three garbage bags on day one and drove the good stuff straight to the charity bin.

Out went the broken bits and about 27 stuffed toys that overflowed from their shelves.

Out went swathes of crappy trinkets and countless plastic novelties from years of birthday party bags.

Out went the headless unicorn and Hawaiian lei.

I cut our number of puzzles by a third and donated board games no one had touched.

And suddenly the kids could see what toys they had.

The declutter created space; suddenly there was value in what was left.

We can now see what’s in the craft cupboard and the kids know where the Spider-Man action toy, dinosaur figurines and baby doll live.

And not once have I been asked about the whereabouts of a toy that no longer resides in our home because of my clutter clean.

Though I did just receive a letter from the school outlining the costume required for the end-of-year musical — boardies, surf shirt, sun hat … and a Hawaiian lei.