Today is a topic that all of us moms dread—-TOY CONTROL!
How do you make ALL those toys inviting to your children, but still be able to enjoy the beauty of your home? This is something that I have tried hard to stay on top of so I’m going to share a quick tour of all the toys in our house and give a few tips on controlling the chaos. You have to remember our house was built in the 1920’s and does not contain the storage that I envy in many houses today! We also live in about 1500 square feet of room which fills up quickly with two adults, two kids, and two dogs—so we have to stay organized or we would be buried alive under toys.
First, let’s start with our living room. I have mentioned this before, but our front door walks right into our living room. This is the main spot where we hang out so we try hard to keep our living room inviting and tidy for ourselves and any guests that pop over during the day. I don’t have a lot of toys in the actual room, but this is what we do have…
These four plastic baskets (purchased in the bath section of Target. I love the color and the cut-out design!) contain all of the toys in this room and are used daily. Two of the baskets hold miscellaneous trinkets (Squinkies, little balls, cars, and little items that I just pick up off the floor), one holds our books on cd, and one holds those Leapfrog magnetic toys (which I love, but drove me crazy as they would get scattered daily around the kitchen!).
Now I’m lucky that right next to our living room, we have this extra bonus room that we use as our office/exercise room/library/guest room! So this is where the majority of our toys are on our main floor. We use our beloved Ikea bookshelf to hold the rest of the toys on our main floor. On the top two shelves are DVDs, cds, and books for both adults and children. The two bottom shelves hold toys. You can see we have four creature bins purchased from Target that I think are SUPER adorable! Right now, these are organized and contain Chuggington trains, Mr. Potato head pieces, Wedge-its, and an assortment of cars. And on the bottom shelves are miscellaneous toys that don’t fit in storage bins (music instruments, ball popper, puzzles/games, etc). These toys can be dragged into our living room, but easily put away back in here.
So moving to the one other spot on our main floor that has kid-related items…our dining room! Our living room opens right into our dining room (our house is a VERY OPEN floor plan—you can hear everything everywhere at all times!). In our dining room are all my craft-related items. On these two bookcases which hold mainly picture frames and decorations (again from Ikea!), the bottom two shelves hold art supplies! One basket holds all things play dough related. The other basket holds all coloring items (markers, crayons, do-a-dot paints, colored pencils, Color Wonder markers, etc.). The four bottom baskets hold random art supplies (glue, scissors, paper, paint, cotton balls, and so much more). The kids don’t really dig around in these without me so thankfully we don’t make too big of an unsupervised disaster. We also use our easel daily often before or after meals so I always have dry-erase markers and chalk available.
Where do we do art? We either work at this little table in the corner of our dining room (again from Ikea) or do crafts together at the kitchen table! We have an abundance of adorable crafts either created at home or at Aiden’s fabulous preschool that I love to hang here!
Before we move downstairs, let’s move upstairs…
Each kid has a play area in their room. They mostly play upstairs when we wake up, get ready for the day, before or after nap times, and around bedtime. If I’m upstairs doing laundry, they are playing toys! If I am getting ready in the morning, they are playing toys. Usually wherever I am…the kids follow (you all know what I mean?!?!)
Andrew’s play space (Don’t you love his little toy box that I found at a garage sale???)
And Aiden’s play space…
And one of my favorite additions to Aiden’s toy storage is this cute little bag from The Singing Sparrow, who also makes some cute children’s clothing. All of the Matchbox cars in Aiden’s room are kept in this little bag. He is really good at cleaning up and putting them back in here when he is done playing with it and it is just perfect for holding all of those cars! (Over at Courtney’s house, Maggie loves keeping all of her animals in here and so does Courtney—no more stepping on horses and tigers in the middle of the evening!).
Now back to the tour…
Where do we store most of our toys??? The basement! Thankfully when we moved in, our basement was already finished! Now, you can’t be a giant to survive in our bottom floor. The ceilings are low (remember we have an OLD house) and it definitely has a basement feel, but it is perfect for what we need it to be…our kids’ playroom! And I have to tell you that before we painted this basement when we moved in—it was an assortment of colors (pink, purple, and blue walls, yellow doors) and really just a hideous room–one day, maybe I will share the makeover we did on this thing!
This is where most of our toys are contained. It holds our train table, play kitchen, and loads of toys!
We have these great built in shelves. We got the storage bins from Target and yes, they are usually kept organized by toys! Each bin holds something different: cars, blocks, Legos, pretend animals, pretend people, games/learning puzzles, various toddler toys, balls, etc. I don’t label them as I often change them out for something different but my kids are pretty good about putting things back where they belong. On the bottom shelf are the bigger toys: lots of trucks and cars, Little People farm, a little car racing ramp, and the Toy Story landfill!
Here is where we keep our little reading nook in the basement. I created these book shelves using double curtain rods and some cute fabric! They are perfect because they save space and are easily accessible!
Here is where the kids’ artwork hangs—again thanks Ikea for creating such awesome products like this hanging curtain rod which is really one of my favorite things ever!
And of course when we moved in, I had to have my husband paint a chalkboard wall for the kids which is filled with scribbles, scribbles, and more scribbles!
Now after reading this super organized post, you may think that we are always super clean and in order. Nope, not always, these boys can easily create a toy tornado in a matter of minutes and no they are not perfect angels in cleaning up either!
So now that you have taken a toy tour, I have a few more tips for you…
1. One thing that I continually do is rotate my toys. Every month, I move things around, store a few things away for the month, and bring out some of the new toys. It honestly encourages to the kids to play with toys that they haven’t touched in awhile—no joke! For example, I had the Megabloks down in the basement taking up space without anyone touching them for the past month. I just moved them up to Aiden’s room and now they are everyday toys! I do the same thing with our books rotating them between bedrooms, playroom, dining room, and our side room. This works out great not just for them, but for you because if these is a book that you just can’t read one more time (Can we say I have read too much Thomas) then I shuffle it down the basement to shake it out of our bedtime rotation!
2. Get rid or store toys that are not played with. I have packed up all baby toys for the next one that I loved and last month, I did a major purge of our entire house and got rid of any toy that my kids NEVER played with. Even if with another one on the way, we have PLENTY of toys!
3. Restrain from BUYING! We rarely buy a new toy. Unless I find a major garage sale deal or if Grandma or Grandpa surprise them on their visits out, we don’t really shop the toy aisles. Andrew is at the age where he doesn’t ask for anything yet and Aiden will point out things he wants when we run errands, but know that they go on a “birthday” list. If he still wants it around birthday/Christmas time—then we always know what to get him or tell relatives what toys he may actually want. And I can tell you that as of now and his birthday is two months away, we only have two items that consistently stayed on the list over the past few months!
4. Pick up the toys once DAILY. I used to pick up all throughout the day, especially when I only had only one! Not so much anymore but I have to admit that as long as I am picked up in the evening, I am content. I either spend a few minutes while they are playing around bedtime (and encourage them to join in), clean up at bath time (and let Chris take care of baths if he is home), or spend a few minutes after bedtime to do some picking up. But I feel so much better to start each morning fresh so I try hard, despite parental exhaustion, to keep it neat and tidy!
Hope this helps control your chaos and would love to hear some more tips from you!
1. I am so jealous of all your shelving!
2. We definitely make due with what we have. I too have a living room that is basically connected to my front door. I have a large box in the corner closest to the front door where all the toys are picked up and put into if, say, I get a last minute guest. My daughter brings her toys into the living room all the time and there’s often leftover clutter when she goes to bed. She’s in charge of taking everything back to her room though. If she doesn’t it goes into the box. Every month or so we go through the box and if it hasn’t been played with or put away then it goes to the Goodwill box. She’s actually pretty good about donating her unwanted toys to other kids. I find myself taking things out of the Goodwill box all the time!
3. I don’t go into her room too often. If I have to to hang up clothes or something and I can’t walk then she has an hour to clean it and after that everything on the floor goes to Goodwill or in the trash. I don’t like dealing with the hassle, but I will help if she asks nicely. She’s 5, by the way, and perfectly capable of organizing and cleaning her own space, in my opinion.
Great ideas! I hope you will stop by my site if you get a chance!!
Chrissy
Thanks so much for stopping by, Chrissy! I popped over to your blog, it’s super cute! I love the colors and how easy to navigate!
Have a great weekend!
I love the organization. That’s my goal this year, to organize the play room because its always a mess. Thanks for the wonderful post!
Thanks!! This is on my to-do list for the New Year!!!
Love all that shelving. The big one I am envious of. We don’t have room in our house for such a big one. But we built 2 small ones in our living room for books and built 2 medium size ones in my son’s room/playroom for toys and games.
That is so cool…I wish I could be that organized. I must work on this.
These are all great tips! My husband actually built a unit that hold buckets for toys, but we still have to keep on top of the chaos by giving/throwing away old toys that are not played with anymore.