My kids have too many toys. We just moved into this house a bit more than a year ago and already the playroom is completely overrun with stuffed animals, little Hello Kitty critters, and LEGO.
I throw this stuff out by the handful whenever I walk through. But it’s obvious I don't walk through often enough.
My first experience with throwing out toy stuff was when Arthur was two years old. We had received his first set of tiny cars set as a gift. He loved it. Every tiny part of it!!! The GUYS who make this type of toys must sit around a conference room, smoking pot and coming up with hilarious ways to torture moms.
Anyway, we had tons of toys all over our house. One morning, I had enough and just decided to collect all this tiny bits plastic parts and just throw it all away…This was quite the epiphany. Oh! Throw it out! Of course! After all this is still my house! I can just throw this stuff out. So once I had them all, I stuffed everything into a bag and threw it all in the bin under tones of under trash so my son would not notice…
I once threw stuff out right in front of them. I had asked the kids to pick up their toys. They didn't. I came in with a big black garbage bag. I picked up two or three of their most annoying electronic toys, put them in the garbage bag, and put it in the bin. Suffice to say, there were a lot of tears that day, but it worked and they now clean up after themselves…Sometimes they are a little slow to get moving, so all I have to do is go in and start shaking out a garbage bag, and they become super-motivated. Yesterday I announced that I needed to vacuum, and I was going to either vacuum up or throw out anything in my path. Believe me, they tidied up.
In all fairness, I have to admit that 99% of the mess comes from Morgane. Arthur has a kind of OCD thing going on (a bit like his mommy, but I don’t see anything wrong about that J )
I am feeling the urge of sorting out the toys again, and the kids have agreed to do this with me. Well actually I told them they would not get any new toys unless they got rid of some they already have… And in the spirit of sharing, I told them that they need to let go of toys that were still in good condition so we could donate them to some associations that collect toys for kids who don’t have any… If anyone is interested, just send me an e-mail, not only will the kids be doing something generous, but it will help me keep my sanity!
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