Please Can We All Agree to Ditch the Goody Bags?

Please, Can We All Agree to Ditch the Goody Bags?

Everybody knows that kids only go to each other’s parties for the goody bags.  Drop a kid off at a party and you can bet they are eyeing up the table holding the Goody Bags.

Depending on the party and how “together” the hosting mom is, Goody Bags can hold some serious swag.  Which, of course, makes the rest of us “last minute” moms envious and somewhat annoyed as we know we’ll never live up to those standards.  However, most parties we end up going to hold a lot of junk from the dollar store.  Mostly, crappy little toys that have no real use, that break before you use them and wind up on your floor before making their way into the trash.

Don’t get me wrong.  I filled my Goody Bags at the dollar store too.  After all, when you’re hosting 10 plus kids you’re lucky to keep the cost under $10.00 and at that rate, you’re still spending $100.00 for crap that’s most likely filled with toxins.   There’s no way I spend that much.  At least I hope not.

Seriously, parties can get out of hand even when you’re poor.

The last party my daughter attended the goody bag contained zero toys, just candy.  The bag was so full the paper actually ripped a little when they closed the bag.  At first, I was like, seriously?  A whole bag of candy? I’m going to be scraping my kid off the ceiling.

But then as I thought about it, I’m thinking that mom was so lucky her kid had a birthday after Valentines and before Easter.  It’s so easy to take advantage of all the holiday candy specials. Not to mention how convenient it is to head over to your local bulk bin store and bulk buy treats.

Still, it just seems these days that the expectations on parents to host amazing parties and provide creative goody bags is just too much.  I have run the gambit from hosting Pinterest perfect (sort of) parties to letting them loose at the bowling alley (5 of them cried because they couldn’t bowl well).   After hosting parties for three kids over the last 15 years, I have found the best parties were the ones where we had a simple cake, snacks and the kids played games in the backyard or basement.

Birthday’s are meant to celebrate the child, not break the bank doing it.

I think with today’s busy schedules just getting the kids together to play freely is the perfect gift. Send them home afterward with a few candies and I would pretty much guarantee that the kids are perfectly fine with that.

So can we all agree to please, ditch the goody bags?