In the ongoing saga of the messy toy tossaway we had a very rough night. Alicia was relaxing for her night off this week and so I took care of getting all the kids dinner and bedtime chores done. That took me about 2 hours to complete and I warned the kids along the way that I would be tossing things at the end of the night. The end of the night came and the basement was still quite messy. I put crying kids to bed as I filled up a garbage bag with Thomas tracks, hot wheels, legos, a wii nunchuck, craft boxes, stuffed animals, and books.
Both Emily and Ethan were wailing. Ethan was threatening to run away. And they went to bed like that. I felt terrible. I know that they need to learn to be responsible and help out around the house. But this was hard - harder than the last time. I talked with Alicia about it afterwards and we agreed that justice in keeping our rules was necessary but that a little mercy was appropriate as well. So we will still keep the toys put away and we will continue to take things away if they're left out at the end of the evening. But we will offer a way for them to give any five toys back from the garbage bag if they do a chore around the house. Whatever is left over in the bag at the end of a week we'll donate.
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