Books

If you're like me and you like to log what you read so you can keep track of it and more readily share it with a larger audience, it's possible you are also involved in reading challenges as those tend to get baked into logging apps a lot. So, if you take part in this and have a kid at home with whom you read (whether you to the kid or the kid to you or some hybrid of the two), would you consider logging those books toward your own personal reading goal?

I'm not talking the little kid board books or even ones that are primarily image based. I mean the (comparatively) more text heavy chapter books that they get into at a certain age. Nathan is all about those right now with preferences on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants books, among others. Yes, they are illustrated, but they are very text heavy and tend to clock in at nearly 200 pages per book.

I mean, it's not like reading some big novel, but they can take several nights to get through. And, let's face it, some of the "adult" books we read can be pretty simplistic. 

Given that, would you count them?

Toys

Mattel is launching a toy recycling program where you can print out a free shipping label and send select Mattel toys back to them for recycling into either new toys or energy programs (if the materials cannot be recycled). They are focusing right now on Hot Wheels, Barbie, and MEGA products and may expand based on success. 

[image courtesy of WGAL.com]

My question, given what you spend on toys for kids, would you recycle them knowing that you are getting nothing back for it save for a warm, fuzzy feeling about saving the Earth? 

I'm not sure about this. I've always been more a fan of paying it forward in the sense that toys can have a second life with other kids, if they are ones you don't want to save for sentimentality's sake. So we donate a lot of toys to different charities or we give them to Nathan's former daycare provider so her kids have a new batch of toys to cycle into their daily goings on.

No, I'm not getting any money back for these other than a write off on my taxes (arguably). But I'm also not going all Toy Story 3 recycling center on them. That scene still guts me.

So would you? Or do you already?