Sometimes my kids surprise me!

Ok, I'll write about the pasta machine later.

I decided to clean up a messy section of toys today and asked my kids to see if there was anything they wanted to give away. My son (5) started putting things in a bag. My dd (8) had been ignoring the cleaning up til then but when she saw her brother culling things I guess she didn't want to be left out? I don't know what the reason but suddenly she started bringing dolls in from her room saying "I don't really play with these". And more, and more, and he was adding more and in the end they pulled aside 2 paper grocery bags full of toys they no longer want!

Not to lose momentum I asked if they wanted to go through books. I pulled all the books off of 4 shelves and dusted and wiped while helping them sort through the titles. In the end they ended up finding two paper bags of books to give away! Wow! We finally stopped because I could see my 5 year old was getting bored but tomorrow I hope to tackle another kid bookshelf (and then Thursday another and Friday another and that should be it!).

And me? I'm proud of myself because this time I had the sense to stay out of their way. The last time we culled kid books (what - a year ago?) I remember putting back a number of things they had picked to give away. This time I saw some of those books - again placed in the "out" pile - and realized that no one had read them in the last year. It doesn't matter if *I* think a book is good, if the kids aren't interested in reading it, what's the point in giving it space? They're not going to benefit from it just by passing the thing on the shelf, right?

So we got rid of books that I enjoyed reading to my dd when she was little, books I thought were beautifully illustrated, books I thought had beautiful stories. We also kept books that met all those criteria so it's not so bad.

Some family members came over today and took 44 of the books and 2 toys with them. The rest I'll have to take to Goodwill this weekend so they'll sit in the front room til then.

So yeah, the praise mainly goes to my awesome kidlets but I'm couting it here too (hey, I gave birth to 'em so that counts for something right? :-)