Living in a Material World
Summer of Simplicity When our daughters were much younger, their toy boxes overflowed with playthings. It seemed they spent more time looking for a toy to play with, rather than plain old playing. So The Hubster and I developed a strategy. Once a month, we had the girls put a few toys into a black plastic trash bag or opaque plastic bin. These were toys that Sarah & Rachel picked out themselves to store. No forcing allowed. After setting on a basement shelf for a month, we found the girls weren't so interested in looking inside the bins, much less playing with the old toys. They had the option of donating the toys to charity, or letting them set on the shelf a little longer. "Out of sight, out of mind" worked wonders in this instance. The trick was to make sure they did not see any of the toys during the first month. I made the mistake of buying clear bins the first time. The object lesson learned by our girls (and their parents!), is that stuff we think is...