When you think about recycling, many of us think about traditional items such as soda cans, paper, cardboard boxes, but what about toys? I asked Jill who writes the blog The Diaper Diaries, to share her experience as she tries to teach her children about recycling their toys.  - Shannan
  

One of the characteristics I most want to instill in my children is that of gratefulness. Don’t you find that next to impossible when we are living in a material world (yes I just quoted Madonna)? Frankly my kids have too much stuff. Between a mom who can’t pass up a good deal, grandparents who love to spoil and too many kids Happy Meals, we are filled to the brim with toys. This poses three problems:

1. My house always feels like a cluttered mess;
2. My kids don’t seem to treat their toys very well because there is always another one (and another one) to play with;
3. My kids don’t seem very grateful for what they have or appreciate that there are many kids who don’t have a house overflowing with toys.

I actually think we are restrained compared to some families I see. I remember growing up my neighbors always had more toys than us. If I had one Cabbage Patch Kid, they had twelve. And I realize that all of this “there are some kids who don’t have toys” thing isn’t easily grasped by a preschooler, but I really want to try.

So we are purging. Some may call it spring cleaning, some may call it de-cluttering. But in honor of Earth Day, we are calling it recycling. See, I think this gets at a bigger problem. We have become a disposable society. And our landfills show it. And my kids seem to think it. A toy breaks (usually because they are being careless with it) and we can just throw it out and get a new one. Something get’s old? We’ll just get the newest and latest model. And all along the way, my goal of having grateful children gets a little bit further out of my reach.

So I am being intentional with my children. We are finding the toys that are broken and figuring out a way to make them salvageable. We are finding the toys that are neglected and seeing if we can rediscover why we loved them. And most importantly (to their mama who is drowning in piles), we are finding the toys we just don’t play with anymore and passing them on. In years past I might have tried to  have a garage sale, but this year we are passing them onto charities that need them.

I think this is a huge lesson for our kids that we shouldn’t overlook. Yes, it is super important to throw the yogurt cup in the recycle bin (which they know to do), but it is also important not to get caught up in all the stuff. Cause all that stuff is going to end up in a landfill somewhere. And if I can combine a lesson about saving the planet, being grateful for what we have, and the importance of giving to others who have less than us, well I can parent the rest of the month on cruise control.

Every six months or so my family spends an afternoon going through toys, picking out the items our boys no longer play with for donation to charity. Afterwards we all drive to the donation center together to drop them off. During our ride there we talk about how important it is to share our toys with others less fortunate.  We’ve found that by getting them involved, it’s much easier for them to let go of their toys- especially those toys they haven’t played with in ages but seem to want to hold on to. Are you talking with your children about donating the toys they no longer play with to charity?  How are they taking it? We’d love to hear about your experience.
 

 

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