If you are lucky enough to have a child, or two, or three... you get the drift, you will know all too well that children come with a lot of stuff. Every Birthday and Christmas brings more stuff, and is it just me, or does the stuff get bigger every year? The other problem with toys is that, of course, they are taken out every day by our little treasures and most often, either not put away (at all!) or at least not put away properly.
I love organising play rooms! I have two children of my own, aged 5 and 7, and I've reconfigured our play area many times to get the right set up. We're actually getting rid of our playroom entirely (eek!) in early 2021, as we are having our kitchen/family room renovated, so I myself am having a toy cull as I'm going to need to re-distribute the toys to other area's of the house. I'll share more about this on my instagram page as it progresses. Check me out if you would like to see how this develops: https://www.instagram.com/mari_annecan/
I've created this post as one of my oldest and dearest friends, Natalie, who also has two children of her own, has asked for idea's for how to keep the toys at bay.
So here we go Natalie, I hope this gives you some ideas!
I'll start off with my top tips that I recommend you follow regardless of what space you are organising:
1) Get everything out, yes it'll make a mess initially, but this is imperative to ensure you know exactly what you have.
2) Categorise - in this instance we are looking at toys, so put all lego together, all soft toys together, cars together, board games etc.
3) Throw away any broken toys and any with missing parts. Are there any toys that aren't played with anymore, or that your children have outgrown? If so, either sell these or donate.
4) Now that you know what it is you need to keep, you can see how much storage you need, so it's time to get started!
Natalie's eldest son, Joshua, has a lot of lego! Lego can be really tricky to store, not only might you have sets that you'll want to keep together, but all those loose parts also need a home!
Clear shoe boxes are fantastic for sets. Remember to label them so you don't forget what's inside!
You can use large shoe boxes, like this fantastic example from The Home Edit, and store loose parts in smaller clear bins, either separated by colour, or kept together - you know how your child plays best, so go with their cues.
There are also huge drawstring type bags that you can get for lego (like the Play & Go toy bag) I've not used these myself but they do have pretty good reviews.
Board games, puzzles and boxed sets can be stored like books, or stacked on a shelf. Organise by colour to make it more visually attractive.
Image courtesy of 'The Home edit'
I adore lazy susan's, they're good in so many spaces. But in playrooms they can be fantastic for storing art supplies. Choose a large size to maximise how much you can store. As you will no doubt need it!
These clear acrylic bins are also a really nice way for young children to see what's inside (hopefully, this will mean they won't tip all the contents out quite so often!)
Image courtesy of The Home Edit.
Books look beautiful colour coded. I know there are varied opinions on this; do you sort by category or colour, but I personally love how it looks. I've colour coded my own children's books this way and I have found that they are more inclined to put their books away in the right place when they can clearly see where the book needs to go.
Image courtesy of The Home Edit.
One last point on toy storage, is that I would highly recommend toy rotation. Get yourself a large lidded storage box, fill it with toys and put it away in a cupboard or the garage if you have one. Every few months, put these toys back in your play area, and fill up the box again with a selection of other toys to put away. Your kids will no doubt be thrilled to see the toys that they'd forgotten about and play with them again as though they were new! Win win!
I hope this helps. Do you have any tips for storing toys that you'd like to share? I'd love to hear.
As always, if you need advice on organising, leave me a comment and I'll do my best to answer you.
Until next time!
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