Green Piñata Toy Share

This is a sponsored post, but OBVIOUSLY Green Piñata is an awesome company, or else we’d have told them to BEAT IT a long time ago.

Collaborative consumption. That’s what experts are calling this age, where companies allow us to share — share rides, share our homes, and now, share our toys.

Shiva Kalshalkar is the brains behind the idea. Driven by the desire for more access to toxin-free toys and a greener way to use them, she founded Green Piñata Toy Share. It works like this:

You register for an account (easy peasy), then select the toys for the age group your child falls into (6-12 months, 12-18 months, 18-24 months, etc. up to 5 years old).

The site gives you suggestions of three or four toys that will show up in your next “Piñata,” a box that will arrive at your door. You can accept or make changes, based on what toys you feel are best for your child. You pay $24.99 for it. I was surprised when I did the math — that’s only $6.25 per toy!

Then comes the party.

I ordered this Piñata for my 14-month-old. She doesn’t know how to dig through boxes yet, so big sis kindly helped her out.

The girls couldn’t keep their hands off the toys. We got to fine-tune our sharing capabilities.

They played and played, while I sat back and watched their little minds decide how to interact with their new play things.

The Piñata toys were their favorite toys the entire month! I would put these toys away for awhile each day, and every time, they would find them and drag them out again. Green Piñata has hit this one out of the park.

Is Green Piñata for you?

My girls already have lots of toys. Most of them are from the dollar bin at Target, or they’re the obnoxious light-up things I always seem to kick when I walk in their room at night. These Green Piñata toys, though, they feel wholesome. They’re toxin-free. They encourage thinking and playing and doing and problem solving. Maybe I’ve just been a bad toy-buying parent up until now, but our toys at home aren’t all that way.

So you already have a lot of toys: Why rent more?

The best toys are the NEW ones! Remember your child on her birthday? Those new toys were the best! But then the newness wears off. And you’re left with an island of misfit toys in the corner of your house that never see the light of day. What a waste.

Does renting pose any problems?

From the day I opened that box I told my 3-year-old, “These toys are not ours. They belong to Green Piñata! But they said we can play with them as much as we want for a whole month. Then we put them back in the box, send them away with the mailman, and another box will come.”

That was all she needed. The day came to say goodbye, and they both helped me pack up the toys and tape the pre-paid, pre-printed packing label on the top. There was no crying or whining or fits. It was a Green Piñata miracle.

Is sharing baby toys gross?

No, it’s not. Not with Green Piñata, anyway. Find out how they thoroughly and safely sanitize everything, here.

The bottom line

If you have a child who is curious and loves to discover new things, this service is for you.

If you care about the environment, and if the image of that cardboard box you accidentally didn’t recycle keeps you up at night, Green Piñata is for you.

If you want to have a sleeker, less-cluttered house and life, this box is for you.

If you’re tired of wasting money on toys that don’t get the love they deserve after one month of use, don that sombrero and grab a bat. It’s Piñata time.

So if you think you want to take a whack at it, follow this link to their website, and tell them Boston Moms Blog sent you!