Help! Toy Organization

[Macaela25]

My name is Mary, and I am drowning in toys...

I feel like there are toys in every room of my house! DH and I are spending Memorial Day weekend organizing our two year old's room and toys, and I am at a loss on how to approach it. I have to go through and weed out a lot (broken or outgrown) but I'd really like ideas on how to organize what we keep. We have a toybox and small organizer with canvas bins. I'm trying to avoid the "plastic look", but at this point I'm willing to do whatever works. I'm torn between keeping his stuff in the family room (we have a separate living room, so toys in there don't bother me) and his bedroom (where he won't play, since he likes to be wherever I am).

What do you guys do to organize toys? Ideas, please! We are willing to spend some money, if necessary.

[susuzpandamonium]

When you sort your toys, have several boxes, Trash, Charity, Resale, Use most often, and outgrown but want to keep. I keep out the toys my DD plays with the most, put the others in plastic bins and stack in the storage closet. This way I can cycle them through when she wants something new to play with. How about under the bed storage?

[sbp]

We used to have a bookcase in the kids room with little plastic (but attractive looking) totey boxes that worked quite well for keeping the like toys together. The reason I say it used to be in there is because my boys would take off all the totes and pretend the shelves were bunk beds.

[niftyneon99]

I have 4 of the three drawer wheeled carts from walmart (rubbermaid or sterlite?) and I printed out labels for the drawers. One drawer says BARBIES and has pictures of barbies on it, then one is CARS, DOLLS, DRESS UP, LEGOS, BLOCKS, BABY TOYS, PUZZLES, ect.

I find it is easier for them to know where things go when there is a picture attached.

I have some canvas totes too, but usually everything just gets dumped into them and then they have to drag everything out to find whatever is on the bottom of the basket.

[XUfan]

We bought a cheap closet organizer at Meijer (Walmart, KMart, etc. have them too) So, half of the closet has 2 clothes racks, and the other has shelves from floor to ceiling. The shelf-half is for toys! Board games stack nicely on them, and you can put small bins on others. There's also room wayyyy at the top for bins or boxes of things they don't use often. And the real beauty is...when you shut the doors, it's gone!!!

If you have a closet in your family room, you might consider just putting shelves in it. That would work too!

[queenofthehivemomof5]

The little kids do not play in thier room so the toys are in our living room. Not much I can do about it since thier room is upstairs and if they are upstairs by themselves they really get into everything.

So my strategies is this. Go through all the toys, I mean dump them all in one big pile on the floor and go through ALL the toys. Trash anything that is broken or missing parts (I just did this and tossed 2 black trashbags of stuff...puzzles & games missing peices, hotwheels that no longer have wheels, burger king toys (junk)

As you are sorting put a box or rubbermaid tote for items they have outgrown. We had a lot of baby toys in our pile. Then I set up a big box for toys that are sets (mega blocks, thomas train set, hotwheels/tracks, art supplies, music, etc).

I then put whatever was left that was not a set, not trash, not outgrown into 3 rubbermaid totes. One tote is kept in the living room and the other two are stored in the top of thier closet and we rotate totes once a month.

Then for the box of toys that were sets I did this great set up (we really love it). I first sorted the sets and made a list of them all. Then I went to Walmart with my list and bought canvas tote bags (in the craft department 3 bags for $5.xx) and some iron on transfer paper that you use in your computers printer ($12.xx for the one with the most sheets of paper) and some 3M removable hooks.

So I took found some clipart for each set and used Word to do up labels. I printed them on the iron transfer paper and ironed on the labels on the totes filled each bag (or bags) with the sets of toys and hung the totes on the inside of my coat closet. I think we had room for 12 bags.

The little guys can not open the closet door on thier own so this works great as they don't have full time access to all these toys with a million parts so we bring them out one set at a time and when done we put them back in the bag and hang them up before getting out another set. The toys in the rubbermaid tote are accessible full time but they are bulkier toys like dolly and stroller, tonka trucks, manga doodles, balls etc)

This is working GREAT for us with the only downfall so far is when it is time to clean up one of the "sets" if we don't get all of them the first time and say DH finds a hotwheel under the couch he just tosses it in the rubbermaid tote instead of putting it in its bag in the closet. So we have to go through the rubbermaid totes before switching them out to find strays.

I could post pictures of the closet canvas bag system if anyone is interested in seeing it.

[mmb1996]

Yeah we are overflowing in toys also, I have 3 kids all within 2 years of each other. What helps is 2 times a year usually before Christmas and then once in the summer when school gets out we go through everything and donate a ton of toys to our goodwill. The kids don't seem to mind and I am usually surprised at how much stuff they want to get rid of. I find myself saying do you really want to get rid of this? LOL

I know what you mean about the plastic look but is there somewhere else you can store them? All my kids have plastic slideout containers under their beds, and then we have an attic and we must have 20 containers (clear plastic is the best so u can see at a glance what in them) where we keep toys that they want but just don't have room for in their rooms. Some of the containers are legos, dolls and clothes, matchbox cars and sets, blocks, video games, art stuff, polly pockets, bratz, pokemon anything (and everything lol), fav. stuff animals, ect. Our attic is easy to get to and we keep all these containers right by the front doorway so the kids or I can get in a hurry what they want to play with. Legos are a favorite of my kids and we must have 5 HUGE containers filled with legos. I am embarrassed to say how much money has been spent over the years on legos, probably more than I have spent on groceries (only sort of kidding)

The kids keep the must have stuff in their rooms and we have a big wicker basket to keep the overflow of things in downstairs that we usually try to empty once every week or two, this keeps stuff from getting to disorganized.

[cinda65]

I would love to see pictures of your canvas bags if possible. Sounds like a great idea!!

[heyaheather]

Originally Posted by cinda65 I would love to see pictures of your canvas bags if possible. Sounds like a great idea!!

Me too!