Nothing Trivial About It

ErikaWittlieb via Pixabay

Last week, I wrote a blog about tackling closets and drawers one step at a time. This past weekend, I started digging in.

I won't bore you with the details of my closet escapades -- just one in particular. While my daughter was out shopping with a friend last weekend, she found a trivia card game she thought would be fun for our family to play. Last night, after dinner, she launched into the questions on the cards. This led to a desire to play Trivial Pursuit, and a search for the game I was sure I'd designated a keeper when we were packing up my parents' condo.

We started with the games in the mudroom closet -- a towering stack of neglected playthings that had,  over time, been nudged deeper into the corner of the top shelf, making it increasingly more challenging for a five-foot-tall person to access any of them. We sorted them, designated about half of them giveaways and moved on to the games in the family room. Once finished, we separated the games we'd still play (Yahtzee, Clue, etc.) from the classics we wanted to keep (Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Hi! Ho! Cherry-O) and stored them accordingly. The classic keepers went back on the top shelf of the mudroom closet while the game night contenders got prime space in the family room.

I loved so many things about this activity. Sure, the new-and-improved closet shelf was nice (yes, I tackled the rest of the shelf after we'd finished sorting games) as was the thought that these games would go to other kids who might enjoy them (via a donation facilitated by a student of mine who works at a summer camp). The feeling of accomplishment was pretty nice, too.

Target.com

But the best parts involved my daughter. I loved that the girl who will be 22 on her next birthday still wants to pick out games we can play -- still wants to play a game with us at all. I loved that the childhood classics -- or most of them, anyway -- survived the cut. And I loved that she wanted to play Trivial Pursuit, a game we played mostly when we visited my parents and, my dad, King of All Games, presided over the game as everyone but my mom (the least competitive of us) fought to emerge victorious.

We never did find Trivial Pursuit, and so the search continues. But I think we did manage to uncover a desire to haul out the games and have some family time.

And that's even better than a cleared-off shelf.