The Big Toy Clean Out

Today was a productive day for the Parry household. Today we dumped every toy in the house (save the big obvious toys like the toy kitchen, doll house, dress up box, blocks...) on the living room floor and weeded out some toys to get rid of. The toy pile was massive. It was the first time we've attempted such a big toy clean up and we managed to weed out lots of things with Grace's approval. We told her we would give the toys away to other kids to play with and she was fine with the idea. Most of the toys that we were able to put in the give away pile were toys that Grace hasn't played with in a long time or that Ethan had outgrown. We wanted to do this before Christmas and the inevitable glut of new toys overflowed our toy storage limit. We have two huge plastic tubs for toy rotation that are now completely empty since all the toys fit in the bookcase in the kids' room, in the toy basket in the living room, or in the living room bookshelf. I'll be saving the tubs to use for toy rotation after Christmas I'm sure.

I'm glad we had the kids help us sort through the toys since we had two goals in mind. One was to thin the stash and the other was to teach Grace that it's nice to share her bounty with others. With Christmas approaching and the talk about Santa Claus and presents already beginning it was nice to take a moment to talk about sharing the blessings we've been given with others.