I suspect like many of my readers,  our adult children moved out and moved on. Certainly, was my case, but they left behind lots of stuff from their childhood.  My youngest was an avid Beanie Baby collector; so much so, we had to scour the airport shops and every toy store both in Phoenix and wherever we traveled.  At the time, Beanie Babies were a bigger craze than Tickle Me Elmo or Furbies.

Today, Beanie Babies are worthless, unless you have the original Princess Diana, the McDonald’s international bears, Peace the Bear, Iggy the Iguana, Gobbles the Turkey, Patti the Platypus, Snort the Red Bull, and Claude the Crab.  If you can find a buyer, these have the potential of earning you upwards to $50,000! But again, the rest of the collection is practically worthless.

Last week I saw a Facebook post about someone who donated her kid’s Beanies to the school librarian.  In turn, the librarian created adoption tags for each; however, no student would qualify to adopt, unless he/ she agreed to read to the pet 20 minutes a day. A brilliant idea to motivate our social media-indoctrinated kids.

With permission of my daughter, I donated 40 or so to our neighborhood school, media specialist–the adoption took off like a monsoon.  The children were so jazzed about not only adopting, but about pledging to read to their pets.  Thus, before purging your house of unwanted stuffed animals, talk to an elementary school librarian/media specialist.  Let’s work together to make our kids thoughtful readers, not internet junkies.