Donating Toys To The School Fair: A Helpful Guide
It feels like donating toys to the school Christmas Fair should be a rewarding, feel-good process. After all, it helps give new loving homes to unused toys whilst raising some valuable funds for the school where your little angel is being educated.
However, it can turn into a bit of a shit show. Here’s my simple guide to donating toys to the school fair.
- Set aside some quality time for your child to sort through their toys.
- Explain to them that giving away toys is a nice thing to do as it means other children can play with the toys your child no longer uses
- When this fails say some old pony about needing to make room for new toys from Father Christmas
- When that also fails tell them they won’t get any new toys for Christmas until they give some away.
- Maybe throw in a fake call with Santa to ramp up the tension a bit.
- Once your child has stopped crying, you can begin the task of toy selection, perhaps by having a space for toys to keep and a space for toys to donate.
- Let them take ownership of the sorting so they get the feel-good factor that donation brings.
- Once all toys have been placed in the ‘keep’ pile, repeat steps 2 to 5.
- Remind child that they haven’t used certain toys for 3 years.
- Have an argument regarding their claim that they’ve been looking for that toy EVERYWHERE and that’s why they haven’t used it.
- Explain calmly that a five year-old does not need a push-along pirate ship designed for a two year-old.
- Repeat step 11 for everything ever made by V Tech that talks.
- Explain that although it’s true that a destroyed toy cannot be given to the school fair it absolutely can still be thrown in the bin rather than preserved like a ancient artefact to be discovered by future generations.
- Once child gets into the spirit of things check the pile of toys selected for donation.
- Take back out the expensive toys that you bought him for Christmas last year.
- Explain why you’re taking back out the aforementioned toys.
- Lose the argument and set a reminder to remove them from the pile once he’s gone to bed.
- Congratulate him on doing such a good job donating some of his toys.
- In the dead of night, stealthily swap out the toys you bought him for some massive, toddler shite that he hasn’t used in years.
- Put it all in a dark-coloured sealed bag and take it to school, hoping that he won’t ask to buy it all back at the school fair.
I hope that our guide to donating toys was useful and will help you get the very most out of your festive giving experience 😬