We don’t have a ton of extra space for toys in our current home, so they mostly reside in the kids rooms or closets. However, our toys were taking over our home! I thought that with the storage bins we had that they would be organized, but to be honest…it just wasn’t working! We had to come up with a new system. While I loved the idea of pretty and easily accessible bins, with young kids this just wasn’t for us.
We had two main storage bin systems. The above which is from target. (I forgot to take a pic before I ousted it) We had it entirely filled with bins. Our 2nd storage bin system is below and we purchased it at toysrus right after my son turned 1.
These bins were a little too convenient for kids. We found that it was just too easy to keep grabbing toys without cleaning up. This would basically mean we had toys and bins scattered everywhere! I had a few more issues with this system. Not to mention it was too big of a tempation to just grab a bin and dump! Here were a few of the challenges we were facing:
- Our main storage bin systems took up both sides of the closets. It seemed to “waste” usable space that we could use for other storage items and clothes.
- With the open bin storage system the toys still looked so ‘messy’ even when they were cleaned up. (See above.) This drove me crazy!!
- A lot of our toys simply wouldn’t fit in the bins and with the closets full with these ‘organizers’ it was difficult finding room for these bigger toys or sets.
So one day I pulled out all our toys and started going through them. To be honest, we don’t even have that many toys. We try and go through and purge the extra things to keep things manageable.
After assessing our “situation” of storage space vs. toys, I organized the toys and headed to the store for totes of varying sizes to hold the toys. I had a few older totes that I kept to reuse. I thought I would have a lot of toys to toss…but to be honest, we wanted to keep most of our toys. We invested a lot into classics like hot wheel cars and tracks, Thomas trains and tracks, wood blocks, so we wanted to keep them around and handy for when we have company.
Great post! I’m going to try it. I think it’s a common problem that mom’s have!
Love toy storage organization! Thanks for sharing.
I had almost the identical thing going on in my son’s room! We had the primary colored open storage unit. I didn’t care for the fact that like you said, even when things were put away it looked messy. I also tried organizing each tub with a specific toy and when we would clean up things were thrown in whichever tub was closest. A couple of week ago we switched to the clear containers in the closet and I am loving it! It keep the toys separated and contained. It makes it SO much easier to say, “Clean up this toy before you get out the next.”
It really does makes such a difference doesn’t it! I was so tired of all the toy “dumping”!