Sunday, we spent a good chunk of the day with Morgan and Coever, cleaning out their room and their playroom. Both rooms were overrun with stuffed animals, half dressed Barbies and scores of scrap paper from arts and crafts projects in various stages of completion.
Since we are coming up on the holiday season, Craig and I decided that before bringing in new toys, the girls should donate the toys that haven’t been loved on in a while. Believe me, there were many of those. You know you’ve got a lot of stuff when the whole clean up process is peppered with , “Oh yeah, I remember that!” and “Oh, man! I forgot I had that!” Goodwill is going to receive several hefty bags of plushies in need of good homes.
Surprisingly, Coever was the one who was tossing stuff into trash bags with reckless abandon. “Just get rid of it,” she kept saying as she scooped up Barbie hairbrushes, stray Legos and un-matched dress up accessories. I held up a mini Kai Lan toy that Coever had begged, begged, begged for. “Toss it!” she sang, as the trash bag got fuller. Morgan, however, was tearing up as she bade good-bye to every leftover goody-bag doo-dad and toothless hair comb. “But I — I need this!” she’d exclaim as she caught Craig tossing a cracked magic wand into the trash. “Oh! Oh! This is my favorite thing ever!”she cried. I held up a naked, headless Polly Pocket. “Really?” I said, “Then where’s her head?”.
Crickets and tumbleweeds. Into the trash with Polly.
Sometime later, we were upstairs in the playroom separating items into keep, donate, and toss piles. The girls were sorting through a mound of stuffed toys. Each animal or dolly was thoughtfully examined, given a few squeezes and sometimes a kind word. The girls danced them around on the floor or on one another’s heads before relegating them to a pile. As they got to the end, Morgan unearthed another one of Coever’s highly desired Kai-Lan dolls.
“Oh, Kai-Lan,” Morgan intoned to the doll, stroking it sweetly on the head, “We have some terrible news. Your sister. . .she’s been. . .donated.”
Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.