fewer toys equals more fun (?)

I recently noticed that aside from their baby dolls, the girls hadn't really been engaging with their toys lately. Pinterest told me that they might have too many choices. I don't know about you, but I listen to Pinterest. So last night I started packing up their toys. I started with the ones with several pieces/are a bit too developmentally advanced. 

Then I tackled the duplicates. Do they really need 45 pieces of train track when only 8 pieces fit in the table? And do they need access to all of their duplos when their preferred form of play is just to dump them all out? I don't think they will even notice the difference. 

When they were under a year old (and all of their toys fit in one basket) I was really good about rotating them out. I'm not quite sure when I started slacking, but I'm ready to reclaim my floors.

I separated the toys that I'm storing into small boxes by type, and grouped them all in one large box. That way if one day they suddenly can't get enough of their trains, I can pull a few more pieces out. And if several months go by without pulling something out of storage, I can get rid of it.

Here is what the basement currently looks like. Keep in mind that every single bin and the fridge were overflowing before the great purge of 2015.

Another solution I like is to shop more (shocking, right?). Apparently the school of thought is that if you buy fewer items around the holidays you can space out new toys throughout the course of the year and always have something developmentally appropriate.