In the blue-collar Latino family that I grew up in, everything was sacrificed to give the kids the gifts they wanted for the holidays. I would have continued the tradition except that something was revealed as I cleaned my children’s closet.

If you have kids, infant to 14, it can be wasteful to buy more than three toys for the holidays.

Here’s what I saw in my kids’ closet: shelves of practically unused and even unopened toys.

To avoid my mistakes here are some holiday tips:

Less toys make for better toy use
Kids almost always play with two toys for a consistent period of time. If you buy more than two toys you will see that most of them will not be played with beyond the first day.

Research toys
The Internet is packed with holiday gift resources featuring some of this holiday season’s top kid-tested toys. 

Suggest family toys and games
Parents tend to be far removed from the toy selection process. Create family memories with games that require group participation.

Share the toy-buying burden
My kids will end up with 15 new toys each Christmas not including the Day of the Three Kings, when a bonus gift or two sneaks in. I think it’s generally useless to buy more than two or three toy gifts for kids. My sister, brother and sister-in-law buy some of the catchiest, most-played with toys. If you have a family that buys your kids toys every year, don’t bother buying too many of them yourself.