Help Your Child Let Go

Being that Trouble just received a lifetime supply of legos and various other toys for Christmas and... being that his room and closet is filled with toys/stuffed animals aka junk he never plays with I thought this would be a good time to introduce him to donating stuff to Goodwill to get a sweet little tax deduction for Mom & Dad.

I started off by asking him if he had any toys that were for little kids that he might want to give away. He fell for it with an affirmative "Oh Yeah!"  Great! I hand him a bag say, "Follow me, we're going into your... closet" dum, dum, dum, dum!

We have a little look in Trouble's super scary closet and decide that the ginormous bucket of toys/stuffed animals/junk needs to be sorted. "OK Chicken Nugget" I say. "You are going to make 3 piles for me. One pile for giving away, one pile for keeping, and one pile for stuff that belongs somewhere else." Yes we need a pile for things that belong somewhere else because little boys put forks, rocks, photographs, underwear, rocks, and did I mention rocks in their toy bucket. Someone has a serious rock problem!

 
So I come back to check out the progress Trouble is making and I see that he's started going around his room sorting more of his junk and he's got quite a bag full of stuff to give to Goodwill.

-"Great work Trouble!! Will you please help me with my closet?"
-"No way Mom!"

Why do I choose to donate to Goodwill? Very simply because they have a drive-thru. They have many donation locations in town and that makes donating to them perfectly simple.
http://www.goodwill.org/
 
PS- Don't forget to get your receipt for your tax records!

PSS- I found this app that tracks the date you donated non-cash items to a charity, the charity you donated items to, and the fair market value of those items.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idonatedit/id341013253?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D6#