Liken the Scriptures

Have you ever read the scripture where King Lamoni's father says he'd give away all his sins to know God? Well, I know I struggle with aspects of that. And honestly they don't tend do be big sins. But I saw that scripture through a new light this morning. Before Alex was born I told myself that he would only get one bucket of toys. That's it. If it can't fit in the bucket then it's got to go. Well, then this perfect little creature was born and I wanted to give him the world. What's the world to a baby...toys! Needless to say he now has quite a bit more then a bucket full. Lately I've been expending A LOT of energy on trying to get them to pick of their toys at the end of the day. Half the time they don't even play with most of them, they just run through and dump the buckets out. It makes me nuts. So I had a brilliant plan this morning. I would put ALL their toys away except for two or three little things and when they learned to pick up those, I would gradually let them have more back. Did they care? No. Of course not. They didn't touch the toys and instead asked me to make them a fort on the bed. They ended up taking the tea set I'd left out into the fort and having themselves a little tea party. They've been content for hours with only a few little things. Amazingly enough this is a principle that I already knew long before I had kids. Kids just tend to be happier with less stuff! It's more peaceful and we have less contention since there isn't clutter everywhere and I'm not harping on them to clean up all the time. So do I give up a good chunk of the toys to have more peace in the home? I love those toys, I have a stupid emotional attachment to them. But life is better without so many. So now I know what I could do, we'll see if I actually do anything about it.