Thursday, November 15, 2007

Toy Crisis

And No, I'm not talking about the toy shortage on the news.I'm going to guess that most parents are like me already thinking, where in the world are we going to put the new crap from Christmas this year? I've actually been contemplating this the last couple months. Our 2020 sq ft home is just over ran with toys and I admit a lot of it is my own fault. My kids have all kinds of different ride on toys. I mean ALOT. We have 2 infant ride ons in the house, 3 Power Wheels, 3 Girl 16 inch bikes, 1 16 in boys bike, 1 12in boy bike for Damien, 2 Little Tykes Motorcycles, a Little Tykes push car, but then I bought 2 antique pedal cars last Christmas. One side of our 2 car garage is solely dedicated for their outdoor toys and equipment that needs to be kept in out of the weather.

In the house my main problem is, I hate to get rid of something that Mia or Damien is going to want in a few years. For example: This Dora house and the Dora Castle (not shown). Alex is 7 and well she never plays with a good majority of her toys because they are meant for preschoolers. The Dora stuff, the baby feeding center, the little tykes kitchen: I have no idea where to put it all for Mia when she gets older. I don't know what other parents do. Do they sell it and then buy it again? Rent a storage unit? Build on?? Throw it all in the garage?Put it in the attic?? It was when we came to #3 when the toys started to pile up, again because Dominic's toys can be used now by Damien and I didn't want to sell them. The house isn't cluttered or looking bad by any means, there's just no room for new toys.
So I figured this Christmas since we shouldn't need to buy a 5 ft doll house or a 4 foot Thomas Train table, we'll stick small toys that shouldn't take much room. Dominic is all about Transformers, those are small enough. Alex is into Barbie and Bratz which don't take up much room. Now we just need to figure something small for the little ones. I'm sure this plan won't work, but it's worth a try.

3 comments:

Jennifer said...

Wow! Last year about 3 weeks before christmas we went throug all the kids toys and got rid of things they didn't play with. We ended up with 8 garbage bags full to donate! They get so spoiled at Christmas I wasn't concern about a lack of toys. Yesterday I began the process again for this year. Good Luck!

S said...

Before Adam's birthday and Christmas we will be giving away a bunch of toys to make room for the new stuff. We have to! our place is overrun with CRAP! And sadly, Adam is most happy with an empty box and a hot wheel car or two.

Rhonda said...

We get rid of things now. I didn't until I had Zachary and knew that we were not having any more. I was the same way, I was not getting anything that we could use later. Good luck!