Teaching Your Kids About Donations
The time after Christmas can be a cluttered and stressful one for some parents. Your house is filled to the brim with new toys and gadgets when you barely had room for all the old ones. Why not take some time to declutter and donate your old toys?
Here are some quick questions to ask yourself to help you decide what should stay and what should go in 2022.
Have you seen it/had to clean it up after your child played with it in the last 6 months?
Did you get a "better"(newer, updated, etc.) version of the same thing for Christmas?
Has your child outgrown the phase? (i.e. dinosaurs, princesses)
How many of those do you have? Do you really need 5 of them?
What does your child think?
It might be difficult to involve them because sometimes they won't want to throw something out, but you can help explain to them the importance of donating things you don't need and help them grow to have healthy attachments to material things. Personally, I wish I was taught this more because I still am unteaching myself my hoarding habits.
The most important thing is not where you donate your toys but that you care about giving back. That being said, here are a few alternatives to the expected Goodwill and Salvation Army.
LGBTQ+ Centers
Foster Care Programs
Homeless Shelters/ Youth Emergency Shelters
I always believe that the energy you put into the world at the beginning of the year will be fed back to you. So, start off 2022 with compassionate energy and care.
Morgan Galvez is a freelance writer and editor with a BA in English (with a concentration in writing, rhetoric, and publication) from the College of Charleston. She is currently building her freelancing career through positions at Brainfuse and Fiverr.