Getting Rid of Old Toys?
If you're like me, your house is covered in toys (we have two little people in our house). And as the kiddos grow, the toys get left behind. However, they're not all trashed-many are perfectly good and surely there's another kid out there who could enjoy playing with them, right?
And if you're like me, your friends have plenty of toys in their homes as well. So you think first of donating the toys to a reputable organization like Habitat for Humanity (the ReStore) or Goodwill. You pack up the car with bag after bag of toys.
But when you arrive, the toys are turned away. No matter their age or condition, they're not accepted. See, this latest rash of lead-tainted toys being recalled has led these organizations to refuse all toys.
This INFURIATES me. I asked the nice young man who was working the donations dock what I was supposed to do with them. 
He told me that I could only dump them, if I didn't have someone to give them to. (the consignment stores won't take anything, either). SO. Because some idiot Chinese companies used lead-based paint and their idiot outsourcing American counterparts allowed it to happen (please, Mattel knows fully well what's being used in their Chinese factories), our landfills will be seeing a lot of perfectly good, usable toys go to waste. There's not a charitable organization in town that will take them-for fear of liability.
What the heck kind of ridiculous society have we created? The baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. Less fortunate kids will have a harder time having a Christmas if there are no toys at Goodwill for their hard-working but low-paid parents to purchase. Instead of recycling these items-they're going into landfills. How in the heck does that make any sense? We're trying to think smart about the environment and about green issues, aren't we?
So long story short, if you have excess toys in your home-don't waste a trip to donate. Find a friend, Freecycle or visit eBay or whatever. And you know, if we could all learn to keep our cool over news stories like this one-realizing that the media has a vested interest in making these stories as frightening as possible...we might not be in a pickle like this one.
