Ok, so I’ve confessed before that I’m a sucker for reality TV. I actually set a reminder on my Outlook calendar about the new season of “Survivor” starting this Thursday. (8:00. CBS. Be there.) A few weeks ago, I discovered that a couple of channels (ABC Family and CMT, I think) are running old episodes of “Nanny 911”. I keep recording them on the DVR. This drives Donnie crazy because he goes to record something and sees five episodes of “Nanny” taking up a huge amount of room on the DVR. And we all know it would be a tragedy if he missed any of that wacky crap he records on the Sci-Fi channel.
Last night, I watched a few episodes while cleaning the living room and culling through the piles of paper clutter that had accumulated on our bar. The featured family had four kids and so many toys that the dad had to use a push broom to clear a path through the house. I am not kidding.
Anyway, Nanny Deb had an ingenious method of dealing with the toy clutter. She labeled one trash can with a smiley face and one with a sad face. The smiley face can was for toys the kids didn’t want to play with anymore, but were still in good enough condition to be donated to another kid and and make them smile. The sad face can was for broken toys that needed to be thrown away. The kids were kind of resistant to getting rid of stuff, but they got into it eventually and their house looked great when they finished.
So we’re doing the same with Eli today. His room is the main toy storage area and it can go from clean to the “push broom” stage in less than 60 seconds. It feels good to be culling all this crap. He asked if he could try selling the “smiley face” toys at our yard sale before donating them, and we agreed. But if they don’t sell, Salvation Army, here we come!