To Share or Not To Share

Let's talk about toys, shall we?

We have no shortage of toys around here.  But if the kids just pull out certain toys and leave them on the floor but not actually playing with them, I re-evaluate their usefulness in this manner:
~ Can it be repurposed as a bath toy? (because I am a little bit paranoid, and if the kids have diarrhea for more than a day, then I bleach or toss their bath toys)
~ Will they play with it again if I put it away for awhile?
~ Did they outgrow it?

When we bought Zesty a new carseat recently, I kept the box and filled it with toys that were not deemed cool enough for me to bend over and pick up eleventy billion times a day.  I have only pulled out one toy from that box in the last month.  The other day we were visiting Sis Pastor's Wife and Pinky started playing with the crawl ball that belongs to their grandson.  We have the identical ball, but she never messed with it.  So I'll be bringing that back out from the box.

I toss most of the Happy Meal toys unless Zesty takes a particular interest in it.  Baby dolls are special though, we love baby dolls around here.  There's a bookcase in the play room that serves as their bunk bed.  Pinky got two new babies for her birthday.  One is as big as she is, and she just loves that baby to pieces - drags it all over the place.  I put one of P's too-small dresses on her and sat her up in Z's rocking chair - about scared the living daylights out of my husband when he came in from work.  The other baby was dressed in a cow outfit and has a magnetized sound box inside, so you hold the little stuffed cow that came with it to it's chest, and the cow moos. Zesty promptly stripped the cow outfit off, and adopted that baby.  Right this minute he is spanking that baby and putting it down for a nap.  Hmmm.

Splenda finally parted with her three-story Loving Family dollhouse and all the gazillion accessories.  She brought it down to Pinky's room.  But of course, she's welcome to come and "organize" the house anytime she wants.

So this brings me to my point.  Are there toys that are community toys in your house? I have the dollhouse in Pinky's room, and the basketball goal in Zesty's room, and everything else in the play room.  I'm sure as they grow and have more complicated toys, there will be special items that they are not willing to have out in the play room for anyone to play with.  I never want a child who is a guest to come and be told he or she cannot play with a certain toy if it is out in the open.  When Zesty gets selfish with a toy that is rightfully his, I tell him to go play with it in his room by himself if he doesn't want to share right then.  That lasts about five minutes, if that, and he's back out playing with Pinky.  It's the only solution I can think of with them being so close in age.

What did you do? How about movies and books? Until they start developing specific interests like a series, I feel that books are community property.  Currently I only have my Louisa May Alcott series out (because they make me happy to look at) but all my other fiction books are in Splenda's bookcase.  Recently we went to the library together and checked out 16 books between the two of us.  I read through one series while she worked on another set, and then we switched.