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Was Santa a little too good for your kids this year?  If you can’t seem to navigate your living room due to all the new toys, and can’t find your children’s bed under all the older toys – it’s time to do something about it.

Donate the Old Toys

Have your children help you go through their toy box and bedroom closets for toys they no longer play with.  Now that they have all the new ones, it might be a great time to weed out broken toys (put in the trash) and toys that just no longer get used (give away).  You can donate used toys to a number of organizations who will make good use of them – check your local churches, daycare centers and food pantry’s to see if any could use toys for families who maybe didn’t receive as many toys from Santa this year.

Not only will you reduce the clutter in your home, but you’ll teach your children valuable lessons in charity and giving.

Rotate The New Toys

Many children, particularly the younger age group, play with new toys for a few days and then discard all but a select few favorites. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing brand new toys and games tossed aside within a matter of days (or hours in some cases!)

One way to get longer use out of your new holiday toys is to rotate them.  Let the children pick one or two of the holiday gifts to play with now, and put the rest in a closet or storage area of your home.  After a few days when they grow tired of the toys they selected to keep, you can let them exchange those toys for something in the closet!  Don’t just give them a new one to play with- have them “turn in” one of the other toys in exchange for a new one.  That way, by the time they’ve gone through the next set or two of new toys, they can exchange again for the first set they had kept out and it will be new all over again.

Rotating toys keeps them fresh and prevents them from becoming permanent fixtures in the bottom of a closet, toy box or shelf.  Some children will forget they have the toys and it can be like Christmas all year, all over again every time they get to exchange their toys for something else!



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