Well, I cleaned up the girls toys and gave a bunch of them to good will. First I tried to be honest about the plan and teach the girls how to throw stuff out. I put a laundry basket out in the living room and said, "Let's get rid of all the stuff we don't play with anymore. Someone else might like it!" After an hour there were one or two crappy toys in the basket. Mostly Lily would painfully decide to throw something in there and then Georgia would snatch it to her heart and save it from the basket. This went on, back and forth, until I decided I had to be sneaky.
I didn't want to throw out stuff they really liked so I stuffed a few bags of junk in the basement and waited for the wails. After a week or two there were a few things I overheard them looking for so I took those things out of the trash bags and sneaked them back into the living room.
Growing up, my mother never threw anything out. It was a good feeling knowing that something wouldn't be tossed while you weren't looking. (Except, of course, for my precious collection of stuffed animals we put in a trash bag for "just two weeks" when I had lice in 5th grade, that was never seen again. I looked for that bag for an entire decade, opening up garbage bags in the corners of the basement over the years to see if maybe my huge stuffed tiger was in there.)
It is a delicate balance.
But, since we (I) have done some rudimentary cleaning and tossing, there has been great excitement about all the toys we discovered and alot of sweet sisterly play with the critters we found scattered and ignored all around the house.
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