Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Yes, Virginia, there is such as thing as too many toys

I was looking around the house the other day only to discover, gasp, that my house has become one rather large toy box. I decided, there must be too many toys here.

Miss C has many relatives and friends so we find ourselves the recipients of many very neat toys. The problem is getting rid of them.

How do you do it? I mean, I know how to pick out what I think are "little toys" but how do you remove them without someone getting upset?

My technique, thus far, is to go through them and pull out ones I remember her playing with a year or so ago and putting them aside. I put all of those toys, and yes, there were many, in bags trying to sort by age group or type, and moved them into the garage. I have put them under a tarp for now.

The next step is waiting to see if Miss C asks for any of these toys in the next week or so. If not, I intend to offer them up to friends here with little ones. Any that remain after that, I will bring to the thrift shop.

How do you deal with the toy situation?

PS Teething update: Miss C is still working on 2 of her 2 year molars but we have found that slices of apples and baby carrots seem to help. Hopefully it won't be much longer until we are out of this fun phase!

4 comments:

cindy w said...

We haven't gotten rid of any toys because I figure we might want them for a future baby at some point. But yes, I have taken out the ones that are not in "current rotation," and I've boxed them up and put them away in a closet.

No idea what we'll do with all the baby gear after we're definitely done having kids, though. Maybe craigslist for the big items (crib, stroller, etc.), and the toys can go to a consignment shop or Goodwill. I doubt I'll ever be ambitious enough to take on a yard sale, but who knows.

Anonymous said...

I would sneak in and remove a bunch of toys that I didn't think she was using and box them up and put them up on a shelf in the garage for TWO months. If she didn't wonder where they were after that time period, it was off to goodwill or the Salvation Army.
Jerry Hendrix

Cat said...

Yeah, I'd wait more than a week too, if you're going to get rid of things altogether. I've made the mistake of getting rid of stuff that e-baby then asks for months later.

I don't completely get rid of anything unless it's really shabby or just annoys the heck out of me. I have several boxes of toys in the attic waiting to be put back into rotation every 4 months or so. I take a half day off work to do it so she won't know.

You might want to just take the best of the "extra" toys and rotate them every few months like we're doing-- it's like getting new stuff every time, and kids get bored of their toys after awhile.

LizardBreath said...

Well, so far she has only asked for one toy that was removed, her blocks. I honestly don't even know why I moved the blocks to begin with! Good thing I still have everything under the tarp!