Help form the organized minded!

[apond]

Or those that aren't but are great at playing the part. Please share what you do or have done with your chilrens toys. Do you have a playroom or are they kept in their bedroom. I would love to see pictures of what anyone has done. We just moved into a house that has room for a playroom and what I have been doing is not working well. Please help. Any ideas would be so helpful.

 

Thanks

 

Annamrie

[pixelroper]

Containers to sort and for easy storage in a closet.

[Jennifer in MI]

We have a lot of toys. Most of them are kept down in our finished basement. We have storage bins and each bin has one toy set in it. So, we have: Legos, Knex, Playmobil (we have 6 bins of these!), Kapla, cars, Darda race tracks, etc, etc, etc. Games are on the top shelf so that the kids need help getting them!! I hate losing pieces.

 

I do keep some toys upstairs for the baby - a toybox of baby type toys, a doll dresser and her tea set.

 

Good luck getting organized!!

[xxxxxxxx]

we have sorted through the toys we want to keep. We have many friends with children younger than ours and also a Bible Study at our house once a week so the toys still get played with a lot!

 

We have bought the plastic tubs and labeled them.....legos, rescue heros, wooden train set, dress up clothes, barbies, kitchen toys, toy trucks/cars, and there is a couple more that I can't think of off the top of my head.

 

Our playroom is in an unfinished basement. We bought a shelving unit that would probably be put in a garage or for storage in an unfinished basement. The tubs are stored on the shelves. Our rule is that the kids that come over can open 2 tubs of toys at a time. If they want something else part way through their stay they have to pick up to be able to get another tub down. This keeps the mess at a minimum.

[mom31257]

We have a bonus room. Half is toys. Half is school, although we don't always do school in there. We have an air hockey table and that helps separate the 2 parts of the room. My kids are 6 years apart, so it helps having toys right there for the younger. We use a storage bin with 4 levels that hold colored containers. We also use some boxes from a Scholastic Book Fair (colorful, yet functional). We also hang an over-the-door shoe bag for additional items.

 

My dd keeps her toys up there (Polly Pocket stuff mostly). We do have toys in our ds's room because that way he has stuff to play with when we are doing stuff downstairs. We have several tubs, mesh containers, etc. I don't label them because I would rather him clean up his room, quickly than get it all organized the way I want. Some of them wouldn't have a play to put a label.

 

 

Amy

11yo dd

4(almost 5)yo ds

[Parrothead]

Toys are in big plastic bins. A giant one for Barbie and other fashion dolls, a smaller one for Polly Pockets, a medium one for Littlest Pet Shop.

 

Right now the bins are stacked up in the toy room. This summer I'm going to get it all sorted out. We moved into this house in October. I haven't made time to get in there an organize it.

[JudoMom]

We have a playroom with all toys sorted in clear plastic bins. We have categories (Imaginext, Little People, Duplos, Legos, Knex, etc). I have 1 bin for miscellaneous toys, but beyond that our toys fit into our categories.

 

The only toys in their rooms are their individual toys, and those are kept in a clear bin with the lid on. If the lid won't fit, it's time to purge.

 

The playroom is in the basement, and they have to have permission to bring toys up to the main floor (it's all 1 big L shaped room). This keeps me from losing my mind because the main mess is kept in the playroom (our school room is down there, too, so this is where we spend much of our time anyway).

[Sue G in PA]

The basement looks like a hurricane blew through on most days I'm embarrassed to say. We have several IKEA Trofast frames w/ the plastic bins, underbed storage and plastic totes for bigger toys/collections. Today the dc did a major cleanout although it wasn't as thorough as I would have liked. At least I can see the floor now! In my perfect world: trucks/cars are kept together (I even labeled the bins w/ pictures for my younger ds and he still can't keep them together!), Thomas trains/tracks in a big tote, books on dresser in a plastic bin or dish pan, misc. toys in another bin, legos in a large tote (we have so many!), etc.

 

Each dc has toys in his/her room in underbed storage. What doesn't fit...goes! It's really hard to keep up. The only thing that will help is getting rid of half of what they own (or more!). I'm sorry I'm not help. I do love the IKEA Trofast storage, though. I'm also fond of Target's cube storage w/ the square cloth bins. Maybe someday...

[kls126s]

I think the best thing I did was put each toy (puzzles, trucks/cars, doll clothes, etc) in its own small tote or tub or something. Then I took a picture of the container and its contents and taped it on the lid or side.

 

The great thing about this is that my kids could put all the toys in the right place before they could read. They just looked at the picture to see what went in that box.

 

The other thing we at least tried to regularly enforce was the "put one toy away before you get another out" principle. Didn't always do it perfectly, but it did keep the mess down.

 

We also do an a-la-FlyLady ten minute room rescue every night in the play area and that really does keep up with it.

 

HTH