Get Rid of Old Toys?

How do you get rid of old toys? My daughter has so many you have to dig under one layer to get to the next layer underneath. The Frozen figures date back to the Cretaceous period while Thomas the Train goes back to the Jurassic, and at least ten coloring books originate somewhere in the Triassic. We haven’t been able to carbon-date a Batman mask, but most experts acknowledge its antiquity.

I’d like to get rid of some of her pile, but she’s like most toddlers in that she wants to hang on to every toy she’s ever owned. Heaven help us if my wife or I attempt to throw even one of them out. It’s almost as if Colleen can sniff their absence. She can’t remember what she did at preschool that morning, but she has perfect recall of every prize she’s ever received in a McDonald’s box meal.

We’ve tried to outfox her. I piled a few old toys away in boxes in the garage, but her radioactive toy-sense began tingling. “What are those?” she asked.

I tried to play dumb, but there was no fooling her. Back into the house they came.

Unfortunately, this sense is selective. It only works in finding toys we’re trying to get rid of, not when it comes to picking them up when they’re strewn all over the floor in every room of the house. A toy could be on the floor right in front of her, but when we ask her to pick it up her standard response is “I can’t find it” or “I don’t see it anywhere.” Does anyone make special glasses that can fix this toy-opia?

The other day, my wife made a colossal mistake of throwing a few of her treasures – a box of broken crayons, a noisemaker that doesn’t make noise, colored paper covered with stickers, all priceless artifacts – into the garbage pail. The next morning, as she dumped her half-eaten breakfast on top of these riches, her toy-sense kicked in again. The broken crayons slathered with tomato sauce, the noisemaker wrapped in linguine, the stickers with a fine sheen of balsamic vinaigrette, all had to come out.

I don’t know where she gets it from, I thought, as I wiped the remains of dinner into the garbage pail that night. Then I noticed, underneath the saffron rice and an apple core, an old Mets tee shirt.

“Hey, did you throw out my Mets shirt?” I asked my wife, who stood in front of the sink, rinsing dishes.

“You mean the ratty, old, faded one with the holes in it?” she asked. “Don’t you have at least a dozen of them?”

“Close,” I said as I fished it out, “but not another one with Piazza’s name on back.”

I don’t want to read too much into her forlorn sigh, but I can’t help but think it was meant for me. In any case, I can’t figure out why my daughter won’t let go of her old toys. She doesn’t get it from my side of the family. Any ideas?

Thanks to Sara Lindberg (Facebook Fit Mom) for getting me thinking about old toys.