Everyone knows that an empty box is the favorite toy for kids to play with. But did you know what their next favorite toy is? Any toy that you are about to throw away or are getting ready to give away to charity.
Adults and kids look at toys differently. An adult will look at a toy and think, “They haven’t played with that in forever. I think it’s time to send it along to Deseret Industries (or whatever the local charity is in your area that accepts used donated toys).”
Meanwhile, a kid will look at that same toy and think, “Wow! I haven’t played with that toy in forever! I think I’ll make it my new favorite toy and play with it non-stop for the next week or two!”
What is especially helpful to the children is when you pile a bunch of these seldom-used toys together in a box. You might as well paint a huge arrow on the wall pointing to the box with the message: The Best Toys!
Because they will really want to play with those toys. And it doesn’t matter if the toy is broken. A broken toy in the charity pile is much more enticing than a non-broken toy in the regular toy box.
Besides, sometimes a toy is more fun when it is broken than when it is not. Santa from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” had it all wrong. Instead of exiling all of the undesirables to the Island of Misfit Toys, he could have just put them in a box labeled “Going to charity” and the toys would have found good homes with plenty of children willing to play with them.
And, if you do try to throw a broken toy away, be sure to do it the right way. Do Not just sit it in the garbage can, because a child will see it there and immediately take it out of the garbage to play with it (and they’ll be mad at you for throwing it away.)
No, when you throw a toy in the garbage you must make sure to cover that toy with other garbage so the kids don’t see it in there. The deeper in the garbage can the better, because kids are like raccoons.
Sometimes I wonder why we even bother to buy new toys for the kids. But I guess if we never bought new toys, we wouldn’t have any toys to put in the charity box. And if there were no toys in the charity box, what would the kids have to play with? (Oh, I guess they could always just play with the empty box.) (Capell is a Serve Daily contributor.)
