Today for babysitting my niece told me how her son gave her permission to throw anything away he doesnt use. I asked if she was cool if I tried to teach him how to clean and organize. (He cant keep his room clean; he owns too much stuff, no containers/shelves, and his room is fucking huge. Like idk anyone who wouldnt struggle yanno? Let alone an 8yo)
We didnt get to super organizing but he was excited to get to learn how to use the vacuum (he's a robotics kid and the vacuum has so. Many. Attachments. And I didnt care how he vacuumed so long as it got done). He also really enjoyed organizing his legos. So I gave him some tips around that but by the end of the day he had gotten into the rhythm so much he was giving me directions for what he wanted.
Tomorrow I plan to teach him the ABC sorting method to help him organize and downsize his toys. Today the BIG ticket items have been put away into proper homes so he knows how much he has left.
So you have them sort everything into A, B, And C categories. A is cannot live without, B is you like them, and C is indifferent.
You use A as the priority to teach the importance of having a home for everything, and to take care of everything, because it has the highest emotional need so they are likely to listen easier.
Then you find a home with B because its stuff that doesnt need to be on display but toys they still enjoy.
Then C is when you sit down and ask "do you care about this to keep, or do you think this could be a toy we can give to make another child happy?"
By taking the time to split them into different categories, they learn to start analyzing their emotions about things.
I will say for first timers they will keep switching things between the categories but so long as they manage to downsize even 1 toy it's working and should be celebrated.
Some may lean on "I'll only get rid of my broken toys" first but that's also fine because its helping navigate complicated emotions involving items
So like using my grand nephew: the A list is his legos, beyblades, rc cars, and nerf guns. Like he knew immediately without question and a lot of the cleaning yesterday was finding everything for those items and putting them in their new homes, which we set his room so each had their own spot to shine, which he got to pick out.