The amount of plastic we have in our house just seems to keep growing. The toy box eventually spills over onto a bookshelf or two. The corner of the room that you allocated as the play area, gradually creeps into the living room and the idea of having a ‘toy free’ area of the house becomes a distance memory.
‘I’m only going to buy lovely wooden toys’ I declared when I was pregnant. Picturing my angelic child tapping away gently on an old-fashioned wooden xylophone. Which he would then pop back on the shelf before pulling out a board book to read. The reality couldn’t be more different. We do have a lovely wooden xylophone but good luck finding it under the piles of plastic crap which seems to be multiplying before my eyes.
Key parts of toys get lost in the mountains of brightly coloured cars, body parts, bits of guns and superhero limbs. Poor Mr Potato Head lost his identity months ago.
The thing that gets me is obscure bits of plastic crap, most likely from the toys that come free with magazines. These are the most annoying. Even more annoying is that when it comes to having a clear out, these random bits of misshapen sometimes clearly broken bits of plastic, simply cannot be thrown away ‘just in case’.
I made the mistake of trying to have a clear with the Toddler the other day. It didn’t go as well as I had hoped it would and all that found its way to the charity shop was a plastic frog which he reluctantly handed over, safe in the knowledge that he had four more. He’s no fool!
I have also been caught out on secret clear outs, when the Toddler has walked into the room clutching piece of a Hot Wheels track that he has fished out of the bin. How the hell he knew it was even in there I’ll never know! I found myself declaring that I had no idea how it got there & agreeing with him that it was vital it found its rightful place back on the pile of plastic crap.
So there it remains……..Along with my pledge that I won’t buy anymore to add to the pile.