Room to breathe!

The toy situation was getting out of control in our house! The kids get everything out in the living room, toy room and both bedrooms and never clean up. I would be ok with them getting everything out, but they don't play with any of it! They have a select few items that they constantly fight over. As long as one has one of the coveted toys, the other wants it. As soon as I distract the one with something else, the child with the toy is finished with it! It is so frustrating to constantly be breaking up fights over toys all the while tripping over the abundance of toys that don't get touched.
Tonight I reached my breaking point and we moved all of the toys down to the basement toy room. This way at least if all of the toys are out and scattered all over the place, it is not the first thing that people see upon entering our house. I am sure that the toys will eventually work their way back upstairs, but at least for now I feel like my living room can breathe.
Now that all of the toys are moved, I need to begin the daunting task of going through the toys and weeding out the ones that they don't play with or are broken. Though I don't think that I will be able to get rid of very many toys (I have more of an attachment to some of them than the kids do!), I do plan to put some of them away in a closet. It seems like putting some of the toys away and switching them out every few weeks keeps the toys new to the kids and more interesting to play with. Being in the basement tonight was actually enough of a change in environment to keep the kids playing nicely while I was working on decluttering the rest of the house of toys. Hopefully the change in environment along with a weeding out of toys will make play time a little bit less of a hassle and a lot more fun!