It is a fact of life. With your proper guidance and love aplenty, your child will become a productive adult and pursue an independent life. In his wake, he will leave behind his toys and wooden toy box in your home. You can either give the toys to charity or sell them in a garage sale but whatever will you do with his toy box? Read on and find out.

You can store your out-of-season clothes and unused linens in the wooden toy box! Often, your clothes cabinets can fill to the overflowing as the weather seasons pass and the fashion seasons fade. Remember your thick parkas that cannot be stuffed with the rest of your winter clothes? Well then, you can vacuum pack and stuff them inside the toy box till winter comes along.

And remember that fashion styles do come in cycles. You don't need to throw away those paisley-print dresses, boot leg pants and other un-trendy clothes. Just pack it in the toy box and wait for them to become “in” again. Just do your sewing magic on them and you will spend less than you normally would for designer dresses!

Also, toy boxes are great storage containers for unused linens and blankets. You can just shove the toy box into any available space and use the lid for other purposes. How about as a decorative footrest in the spare room? Again, do your magic in redecorating the wooden toy box!

Your husband will definitely appreciate the wooden toy box as a tool chest. Whereas it was used to organize his little boy's toys, now it will be used to organize the tools for his toys for the big boys. How is that for reverse legacy?

Now, your usually cluttered garage can start getting a semblance of organized chaos that could hopefully turn into Martha Stewart's idea of the perfect garage – clean and organized with nary a speck of wayward grease and a stray tool in sight.

If you previously used separate paper boxes to store memorabilia of your courtship and wedding, your kid's childhood mementos, your husband's medals, your size zero dress, photo albums from long ago, and other odds and ends you simply cannot part with, then you need to re-think your storage style.

With the proper installation of dividers in the wooden toy box, you can store all these mementos and memorabilia in just one container. Imagine the convenience of opening just one box and all your life's significant moments are just one click of the lock away. Besides, when a fire rages in your house and you desperately want to save your odds and ends, then you will only be dragging one box instead of juggling many containers.

Of course, with a little more imagination and a few decorating skills, you can always turn the toy box into a shoe box and a bag closet. Just don't stuff dead things and dead people in them!

The bottom line: You can contribute to saving the planet when you recycle your kid's wooden toy box and allow it to have a second lease on life.