Results
We did it. Yesterday back six hours of close sprightliness (and some scuffles) we sorted all the girls toys out, every single one of them. I was on a mission and by the end of the afternoon, they too were infected with my enthusiasm.
After some advice from a comment on a previous post and thoughts from one place to another our impending rouse at the end of September, I unhesitating that we had to hoax something to lay our ‘problem’ with toys. So we started early yesterday morning with a plan toward a kind of sorting aloud ‘game’, the rules I explained slowly and clearly to the girls:
We need to sort out the toys into two piles; ones you want to take with you and ones you can put into storage for the hibernate.
I think there will be enough room in the new house for you to choose 6 soft toys and 4 board games each, a large and small doll, twenty books each and two shoe boxes of anything else you want.
There will be another pile made by me of (educational) toys and books, which I would of a piece to take.
Everything that has been chosen must be initialled, to save on arguments in the future.
When we have done it, we will take a trip to the toy shop (something we have never done in front of) and you can buy one new toy each.
At the end of the winter we will decide what to do with the toys in the ’storage’ pile; give them to children who have no toys, or friends (eyes stay resolutely set).
Whilst we started steady our task, I explained to them the importance of clearing out the toys in adjust to make latitude for others to come into their lives. They seemed to take . this and as space of time went put on actually got into it, discussing the merits of each one. Perhaps they felt a kind of liberation as they let toy hinder toy go into the storage boxes. When dOH came home, he even tried to obtain some back into the house, saying, “Don’t you want these?” “Oh no, Daddy, we have finished by those,” came the reply.
They chose 6 soft toys each, we eminent every one of them. They took one Barbie out of the pile of 13 - 13!! and one larger baby. I put all their precious baby clothes in another box. I distinguished up more boxes for the pens and scissors, paper, tuneful instruments, skittles landed estate animals and skipping ropes, the ‘communal toys’.
They chose their board games; jigsaws, cards and dominoes (I chose another wooden game for my amass) and then started to fill two shoe boxes each with miscellaneous items, all marked with their initials. Everything was arranged on their shelves, the books we are sorting out today. Bubble even suggested we go through their dvds too, saying, “I really don’t want Pete’sitting Dragon any more.”
Wow, that’s some event.
They did fight over their jewellery; it became a bit of a free-for-all as I allowed them to fill up a jewellery receptacle each. They worked it out in the end, but I did lay hold Bubble later on swapping a not many things around, diligently form the ‘S’ into a ‘B’ with the marker pen. I said nullity.
Later on, they sat quietly in their room, each with a shoe box in forward part of them. They played with their ‘new’ toys for an hour without argument and then packed every single the same of them back away onto their shelves.
Now that really is more result.