Finding Toys

Moving sucks.

No, I'm not going anywhere, but my brother and his family are. I have the honor and privilege of helping them pack up their house. (My brother and sister-in-law both read the blog.)

The first order of business was to sort through the kids' toys. We were to pare down their massive collection to a more manageable amount. I set us up with a trash bag for trash, a trash bag for giveaways, and boxes for those toys that were to be packed.

Some things in the room were already sorted. There was a Lite-Brite cube over near the closet. I asked my niece (who I'm going to call) Blondie about it. She said it was to be given away. I asked her where the rest of it was, as all that was sitting there was the cube--no instructions, no pegs, nothing. Blondie had no idea.

It took us three days to sort the toys (well, it might have been four...it's all starting to run together). The second day in that room, I concentrated on the various piles of clutter around the edges. There were a lot of pencils and pens. There was also a lot of junk and trash. I had Blondie go through it all (she's 10, so she can handle it). Most of it went in the trash. But somewhere in those piles we found the instruction packet for the Lite-Brite.

Score! I added that to the giveaways. But we were still missing the pegs.

The last day in the room, we tackled the closet. The less said about the Christmas candy we found in there, the better.

On the tippy-top shelf in the closet were several shoe boxes. I pulled them all down and found they were all empty. Easy trash. Then I noticed a plastic bag up there. It wasn't until I pulled it down did I figure out what it was. The pegs! The Lite-Brite was now complete.

I went to put the pegs in the giveaway trash bag, but Blondie stopped me. Now she wanted to keep it.

Naturally.

As she still had room in her allotted toy box, I pulled the thing out of the giveaways and put it in with her toys.

Oh, the things you find when you're packing.