Dealing with Pack Rat Kids

It's a chilly, rainy day here in Maryland and I'm into cleaning, decluttering and purging throughout the house. I can't really stand having clutter all over the place. Piles of stuff with no organization or order just make me feel claustrophobic. Guess I'm sort of a neat freak.

My hubby and two older kids are reasonably like minded. They like being able to find their stuff when they want it and really don't like tripping over toys in their rooms. Each night we remind all the kids to take their toys or electronics back to their room at bedtime leaving our living room neat and clean ready for the next day.

The only one not of the same mindset is my youngest who's 8 years old. While we love her immensely, she is a bit of a pack rat. She has a VERY short attention span and quickly moves from one thing to the next totally forgetting the previous task. Plus she tries to save everything. You may remember I posted about her room here back in December. Well, it's a bit of a mess again.

We're wondering if it's just her or is it partly her room to blame. In her defense she does has a very tiny room (about 8X9). She has a twin loft bed, a tall dresser, night stand, a bookshelf/toy box and a small table to do homework on. That's a lot of stuff and doesn't even include her toys which as many of you know smaller kids have bigger toys.

She seems to collect anything my older two don't want and that's natural, but she doesn't really want to part with an equal number of her younger kid stuff.

The hubby and I are considering getting rid of a good sized chunk of her toys. This would be devastating to her plus we wonder if she would have it messed back up in no time flat.

We are at our wits end.

Any advice for some neat freaks dealing with a pack rat child???