Charity begins at home

I like to think of this time after Christmas as a time to think of others less fortunate than ourselves (really, there are people in worse debt than me!!) and so we take the time to carefully choose some of the children's toys to give to charity. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that they get far too much for Christmas each year and without a massive sort out we would not have room for all of their new stuff, I think there is a valuable lesson for the children to learn about children who do not get presents at Christmas. Maybe I could kill two birds (not literally, Sarah!) with one stone next year and not buy them any presents. The problem with that is, I like shopping as much as (probably more than) they like receiving the presents.

We do have a problem though of where to store all the new presents. Our house is not tiny, but it's full already and we don't have a spare room. Having had Christmas at Seany's this year, we came back and literally dumped everything into the conservatory, where it has stayed. I am gradually filtering some of the gifts into the children's rooms but they simply do not have anywhere left to put things unless we get rid of something. Little Z has very conveniently decided she no longer wants to keep her huge Sindy doll's house or the furniture. It is a bit easier with Little Z as she has a lot more stuff which she is growing out of or doesn't play with any more. Big J on the other hand, has the smallest room in the house and does not seem to have grown out of any of his toys yet. We were given several big boxes of boys' toys by a neighbour last year and although we passed some of it on at the time, we kept a lot of it and the storage space in his room is full to the brim not to mention the big tub and 2 boxes and a small tub of toys he has downstairs in the living room. I go through phases of ruthlessly getting rid of lots of stuff, but even that's not working at the moment. The minute I put things into a bag for the charity shop, Little Z finds the bag and gives Big J all his stuff back. I heard her telling him this evening, "Mum wants to give this to the charity shop" (passing him a Bob the Builder phone.) I would have been really cross, except Big J is only 2 and has no idea what a charity shop is because it is not something he can eat.

I need someone to give me some good ideas on how to get rid of the children's toys. Otherwise I will have to do it during the night and tell them santa came back and he was very cross!