Yesterday, I had a nice visit with a new friend and fellow mom. She is a great person, and I am glad to have met her. In the course of our conversation, we talked about how many toys our children have and the need to purge toys when the youngest of our broods outgrow them.
My new friend told me that she was in a quandary. She wanted to recycle some of the toys but didn’t think that the hard plastic would be taken by the recycling center. Instead, she said, she was forced to throw the toys out.
Well, of course this set off alarms in my little frugal head. Throw them out? As someone who has a household full of toys that are mostly second-hand, throwing out perfectly good toys that were owned by one small family seems odd to me. I suggested that she donate the toys instead. She was surprised, I think, that a thrift store would want them since they had been used. But as long as the toys aren’t broken or recalled, they could have new life with someone else. Some of the toys she described are expensive brand-name toys that would surely brighten up some child’s playtime.
So, please. If you have extra toys that you no longer need, consider passing them along in one of the following ways:
Donate them to a thrift store
Donate them to a pregnancy center
Donate them to a children’s hospital
Donate them to a women’s shelter
Donate them to a local church
Donate them to a day care facility
Post them for free on Freecycle
Hold an outgrown swap
Donate them to a needy family in your area
Bring them to a consignment shop for resale and ask that the proceeds be donated to a charity of your choice.
Do you have any ideas for passing on used toys?
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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