My children, with the help of their Nana, are borderline hoarders. Toy hoarders. Our playroom looks like the back room of KayBee Toys had a love child with a yard sale 25 cent tarp toy box. OY. We have wheel less cars, gnawed on wooden puzzles and sticky frogs, galore. I think they are all trash. Big thinks they are all equal to golden doubloons. Nana has an emotional attachment... To every single action-figure-less leg, every hot wheel has been and every lint-covered, sticky frog.
Cleaning the toy pit with Nana there is like trashing the last heroin hit needle near a junkie. It starts with defensive chatter, compromises, flat out pulling from the bag and then full-on, TV quality, guilt trips. Fun times.
I waited until Big was napping and got to work. I SHOULD have waited until Nana was gone or napping, too. I know better for future purges. One large sale box and a trash bag later, we still have a billion times more than a typical family, but according to Nana, they LOVE every broken toy in the bag. Does anyone have the address for broken and misfit toys? That might make her feel better if I promise to send them there.
We have a friend who will purge her kids toys a couple of times a year with a trick. She saves about a third of the toys that are keepable and rotates them into the toy pot, taking others out, around the time she purges. Her kids find toys they didn't even remember they had and are excited.
ReplyDeleteWe hauled a crap ton of toys with us. Mostly tokens for my oldest when I couldn't give him the sibling he wanted. We purged this past fall. It was nice.