Purging

Yesterday I decided it was about time to "purge" some of the kids' old toys and random junk. I try to do this about once a year. I go through all their toy boxes and make a pile of toys to donate to charity and a pile of toys to throw away -- happy meal toys, things that are broken, missing pieces, etc. I ended up with one full trash bag of toys to donate, and two full trash bags of stuff to throw away. In the process, I organized some of the toys in Ben's room -- put all the matchbox cars in one container, all the action figures in another, etc.

When I do things like this I usually have bad luck and about 10 minutes after Ben walks in he starts looking for a toy he hasn't played with in three years that just happens to have been "purged". But this time -- so far -- I have been lucky. Ben walked into his bedroom, looked around, and said "Why is my room so clean?" Then he noticed the box of action figures, some of which he hadn't seen in so long he'd forgotten he had them. "AWESOME!" he yelled. "Mom! Look what I found!"