Trick-or-Toiletries #2

My second year of Trick-or-Toiletries was just as exiting (if not more) as the first one. The first year was kind of confusing because we weren't very organized and I forgot which houses had been given a flier ahead of time so some people didn't know what I was talking about when I tried to collect the donations! When we passed out the fliers we brought a notebook and kept track of the houses we went to by writing down the addresses and only went to the ones that we had on the list. It was nice because we didn't have to walk as far as we did last time, plus (as my mom says) the amount of candy we got that year went down!

Trick or Treating at one of our neighbor's houses

Again we were stunned by the people's willingness to give, even though I was sort of expecting it and set a higher goal of 300 items. I figured that if we could do it once we could do it twice, but we barely made it! It was a close call. This time though we were smart and brought a wagon! To my surprise, some people were saving up toiletries all year to give to me at Halloween. One of my dad's co-workers collected all the toiletries she got from the hotels she stayed at while traveling. A neighbor who is really into using coupons was able to give me a ton of stuff that was mostly free or almost free! Another neighbor worked at a factory and she was able to give me a ton of dental care samples.

I dressed up as a hillbilly that year and spent hours (exaggeration) sewing patches on those overalls!

Another surprise was that my mom emailed other homeschooling families telling them about Trick-or-Toiletries and a family who had just moved to Arkansas from California followed my example and collected almost 300 items in their new neighborhood!!! What a blessing! I'm not sure if any other kids did it, but at least a lot of people thought it was a great idea and a seed of generosity was being planted in people's hearts...

We also had a new baby brother that year so my mom forgot to take pictures of all the items we collected! Excuses, excuses!