Yesterday was the used toy exchange and it went just great. Ten reasons why:
1. The attendees. Some of my favorite people who I see far too little showed up along with favorite people who I see a lot but can never see too often. If we are judged by the company we keep then I am awesome because awesomeness is what showed up to my toy exchange.
2. Getting rid of toys is deeply gratifying especially when you get to see other people say, “Yes! Just what I wanted to put in the stocking!” as they haul your junk away.
3. Free finger puppets!! Thanks Mollie!!! (I love finger puppets, which is weird because I don’t really love regular puppets.)
4. New friend for Madison!! Thanks again Mollie!!!
5. Three of us who are writers and who have that stay-at-home, making-a-living, raising-kids reality staged an impromptu support group at the end of the day and it fed my heart and gave me courage. Thanks Tracy and Terreece!!! That really needs to happen more often.
6. Free toys for Roscoe! There seemed to be some kind of unspoken competition to give Roscoe the best, most rocking baby toys and Pennie went home with something like four boxes/bags of really nice baby toys. I told her she can bring them all back next year when people will have toddler toys to give her because that is the Circle of Life toy style. She was really happy with her haul!
7. Allyo brought some seriously delicious pastry but then she always brings the good eats.
8. Terreece‘s son is just a month older than Roscoe and for some reason it’s hilarious to me to see babies the same age together. There was some major cuteness going on in my living room by the end of the day.
9. Roscoe is talking! Ok so it’s baby talk — he’s still brilliant. He’s verbalizing now and grinning and being an audacious flirt. Oh lord, he is cute! Madison sang to him for a good long time and he got his eyes fixed on her and tried to sing along. I just ordered a new (to me) video camera and can’t wait to get some of this on tape!
10. My now clean house because we cleaned pre-party (of course) and it stayed clean and then we got rid of so much. Decluttering is such a lovely, lovely thing and my heart gets lighter with every bag of stuff I send out the door.
I highly recommend the used toy swap as a fine social event as well as a useful means of gathering toys while getting rid of toys. We didn’t do anything formal — just set the stuff out and let people dig around. It wasn’t like one-to-one trades (although people could do that, too, if they wanted) and every time someone said, “Am I taking too much?” everyone else would say, “No! Take! Take more!” It was a lot of fun. Two thumbs up!
(Several people encouraged me to make this an annual thing so I’m going to. It was just that good!)
Jealous of the toy swap.
finger puppets are KEY! i was just reintroduced to some old favorites and just can’t get enough of the little monster…
Thanks so much for doing it, Dawn. It was super fun to see everybody.
Fun,fun,fun!!!
what was the format, exactly? i’m thinking about doing one.
Cynthia, I’m late to this ‘cuz I was writing it up for Shareable:
http://shareable.net/blog/how-to-throw-a-used-toy-exchange
[...] …Toy exchange! I had a great time, but I always do at Dawn’s because as she said, she knows some pretty awesome people. It was great to get rid of some stuff (I won the “brought the most crap” award), especially things like Jamie’s old kitchen and tricycle and knowing who they were going to and knowing they’d be loved some more. Also fabulous was leaving with only a few items that Jamie will be getting for Christmas. Big super thanks to Dawn’s husband Brett for taking the rest…somewhere. I think either Goodwill or the curb! [...]
Love the toy exchange idea! We did a kids clothing exchange a couple of weekends ago. Here http://www.tucsonmama.com/2009/11/21/reminder-kidsbabies-clothing-swap-this-morning/
It was a blast! There was an admission cost of something for the local diaper bank. I got a cool cow costume for a friend’s kid.