Our house is full of kids toys. We'll clean up the house, finding toys scattered to the furthest corner away from the children's bedrooms, where the toys are supposed to be kept.

It takes hours to collect together every stray doll, missing puzzle pieces, forlorn teddy bears and Tonka trucks and put them back in their respective places. And yet, somehow our children still insist that they need more toys.

That they haven't anything to amuse them and the most interesting thing they can find to do is complain to us.

On the rare occasion when our children's bedrooms are actually housing the bulk of their toys I have taken a chance to peruse their shelves, open their closets and peek under their beds. There are literally toys everywhere!

However, I must say one word in their defense: a great number of these toys are not fully functional due to long-dead batteries that are seldom replaced after the second round. Having such a proliferation of battery operated toys is a phenomenon familiar to most families.

Even more familiar is the occurrence of these toys being inoperable due to their need of fresh batteries.

That brings me to the question, why do parents continue to purchase such battery operated toys. Shouldn't be have begun to clue in somewhere along the way? Why do we continue to be such suckers? Somehow we think we're getting a great deal on a particular gift. Do we ever figure in the years of commitment and expense we are getting ourselves into?

Or do we know all along that we have no intention of replacing the batteries and yet continue on buying these battery operated toys, as some sort of sick joke on our children?

Whatever, the case, I know in our family we have so many toys that require new batteries that should we choose to replace them all in one shot, it would likely cost us several hundreds of dollars.

We have tried the Dollar store route. We've bought massive packages of dud batteries, thinking we getting a real deal for a dollar. So many times, these batteries will provide a surge of power for a matter of minutes and then resort to short little spurts of energy, ending up completely useless to our battery operated toys.

In the end we've simply decided to weed out the most favourite of these toys, leaving the rest in a big box destined for an upcoming garage sale.

These toys will then be passed on to another unsuspecting parent who thinks they too are getting such a great deal. And finally we'll be rid of the problem of all these battery operated toys that we've accumulated, making it somebody else's problem once and for all!