Description
Our house is full of kids
toys. We'll clean up the house, finding toys scattered to the furthest
corner away from the children's bedrooms, where the toys are supposed
to be kept.
It takes hours to collect together every stray doll, missing puzzle
pieces, forlorn teddy bears and Tonka trucks and put them back in their
respective places. And yet, somehow our children still insist that they
need more toys.
That they haven't anything to amuse them and the most interesting thing they can find to do is complain to us.
On the rare occasion when our children's bedrooms are actually housing
the bulk of their toys I have taken a chance to peruse their shelves,
open their closets and peek under their beds. There are literally toys
everywhere!
However, I must say one word in their defense: a great number of these
toys are not fully functional due to long-dead batteries that are
seldom replaced after the second round. Having such a proliferation of
battery operated toys is a phenomenon familiar to most families.
Even more familiar is the occurrence of these toys being inoperable due to their need of fresh batteries.
That brings me to the question, why do parents continue to purchase
such battery operated toys. Shouldn't be have begun to clue in
somewhere along the way? Why do we continue to be such suckers? Somehow
we think we're getting a great deal on a particular gift. Do we ever
figure in the years of commitment and expense we are getting ourselves
into?
Or do we know all along that we have no intention of replacing the
batteries and yet continue on buying these battery operated toys, as
some sort of sick joke on our children?
Whatever, the case, I know in our family we have so many toys that
require new batteries that should we choose to replace them all in one
shot, it would likely cost us several hundreds of dollars.
We have tried the Dollar store route. We've bought massive packages of
dud batteries, thinking we getting a real deal for a dollar. So many
times, these batteries will provide a surge of power for a matter of
minutes and then resort to short little spurts of energy, ending up
completely useless to our battery operated toys.
In the end we've simply decided to weed out the most favourite of these
toys, leaving the rest in a big box destined for an upcoming garage
sale.
These toys will then be passed on to another unsuspecting parent who
thinks they too are getting such a great deal. And finally we'll be rid
of the problem of all these battery operated toys that we've
accumulated, making it somebody else's problem once and for all!
By: George Johnson -
Sustainable Living Articles @ http://www.articlegarden.com
Living with Battery Operated Gadgets .
