Hello Dolly

Every year around this time I like to have a good tidy up of the childrens’ toys. Obviously they have some toys in their bedroom then we have a big wooden chest in the living room and for ease of play their craft things live in a huge box in the kitchen but their main storage is a huge cupboard under the stairs. It really is a cupboard of huge never ending proportions and in theory, there should be more than enough room for everything to live in there. I try to store different things in different boxes (Barbies, baby dolls, cars, Lego etc) so that things are easy to find but my girls are rubbish tidy uppers and in time, the cupboard goes from being neat lines of boxes to just one great big heap of toys. Sigh.

It is one of those jobs that I put off for as long as possible but when it comes to a point where there is a real danger of an avalanche, I have to sort it out. This normally involves me emptying the entire contents of the cupboard to start all over again. And there is always a bit in the middle where I look at the piles of destruction and think OH MY GODFATHERS WHAT HAVE I STARTED! But actually when it’s all done and dusted, I look back and realise that it’s really a rather satisfying job. It’s a great chance to put everything back in its right box of course but also an opportunity to be ruthless and get rid of broken things or accumulated rubbish like sticks with eyes drawn on that I am sure were once treasures but have long since been forgotten about. Unless they spot you trying to bin said sticks of course and then they claim that they can’t possibly live without them.

I do like to be able to put some things aside for the charity shop too if there are things that we have outgrown. It’s always nice to pass on nice toys for other littlies to enjoy especially at this time of year. But as ruthless as I am, I must admit that there are some things that I just can’t bear to part with. It’s amazing just how sentimental this job can make me. And it’s especially the case when it comes to cuddly toys. We have a whole mountain of them and they hardly get played with but somehow cuddly toys are always hold the most memories for me. Like this little rag doll. I found her at the bottom of the cuddly toy mountain and when I pulled her out with a great big ahhhhhh I was immediately transported back to my now eight year old being a teeny tiny tot. I bought her this dolly because I thought she looked like her with her lovely brown hair and we always always always used to take her out in the pram with us. Wherever we went, dolly went too. At some point dolly got forgotten and my daughter doesn’t remember her at all. But I do. So I bumped her up to the top of the cuddly toy mountain so that she can enjoyed all over again hopefully.

Filed under: family, Home, Parenting Tagged: charity shop, childhood, children, daughter, doll, dolly, eight year old, memories, rag roll, ruthless, sentimental, storage, tidy up, toys