Cleaning House

A few times a year I get an itch (eww, that sounds gross). An itch to have a house and lifestyle that is much different. Don't read this the wrong way...I still want the same husband, same kids, same experiences, just one of those neat and tidy homes with barely anything in them that you see on TV, or that you see when you go to your friend's house. My kids are young, so I try to reconcile in my mind that the clutter of little plastic things is just the phase that I'm in and it will not be this way forever. But the piles of little plastic things get to be so disorderly that even my kids don't play with them that much. And let's not get too crazy in thinking I am WAY above such things, because there are piles of things other than primary colored plastic things all over my house too...
I start thinking this way once people start talking about Christmas or Birthdays, usually when the idea of more stuff coming into my home becomes inevitable. How can you bring more stuff in if you don't get rid of some stuff? And, unfortunately, (actually, very fortunately except in this very singular instance!!) my kids are all different ages (not triplets) so they are at different stages of playing and have different interests in what they want to play with. Logan is still in the "everything goes into the mouth first" stage, so toys need to be big enough to not present a choking hazard and non-toxic, and easy to clean since he drools and spits-up all over them. Max is into mostly whatever Lucy is into, but seems really interested in making up imaginary games with characters and stuffies. Lucy is mostly into creating. Drawing, coloring, art projects, crafts, scissors...itsy bitsy pieces of paper everywhere. So cleaning a clean-out of unused toys is sometimes difficult, because I rationalize to myself that maybe someday one of my younger children will be interested in this item because they haven't hit that stage yet...even though the older one has passed it. Anyway, the point of my ramblings? I want a clutter free home. If there are toys that my kids haven't played with in months or even a year, should I just get rid of them, or is it because there's TOO much clutter that they can't even see what's fun anymore, so they just grab the stuff on top of the pile? Plus, in an ideal world, I'd love to just have a few boxes of things and see how many different games they can come up with to play with those few items. Imagination to the max, or something like that. But I've also invested money in these toys, so getting rid of them doesn't seem frugal.

Maybe I'm just hoping that a less cluttered house would mean a less cluttered mind.