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Our place is tiny for a home with 6 people living in it. It’s not the people that make it feel small, though. It’s all the stuff we’ve got! I’m constantly trying to pare us down to having less ‘stuff’, and even though we don’t own a ridiculous amount of things, sometimes it feels like we just have too much stuff.
One of the biggest clutter issues in our house are all they toys. We don’t need to buy toys because we are given so many, and now they are everywhere! But I wouldn’t want to throw out something that was a gift, so we’re kind of in a pickle here.
We looked into getting some toy shelves that help organize all the toys. As cute as they are, they just don’t fit in our small space. Fortunately I have a solution.
Enter my Toy Storage System
I’ve noticed that, no matter how many toys as we have, that is how many toys the kids will dump all over the floor. They play with a thing for a few seconds and then are over it. Or worse, they just dump them all out to see what all is in the toy box. Little stinkers!
Since they are just going to spread everything out anyway, I figure I might as well give them half as much stuff to make a mess with.
I set aside the absolute favorite toys because those are too precious to be put in storage. Then I divided the books, puzzles, toys and stuffed animals into 2 groups. Half of the toys went into a big toy storage bin (just a regular plastic bin from Target or WalMart works great). I like to use a clear bin so I can see what all is in there.
After that, the kids and I drove to the storage unit to drop the toys off. If you have a garage that would probably be more ideal and a lot easier to access once you want to switch the toys out, but we don’t have a garage so a storage unit works fine for us.
I labeled the bin with the date we boxed the toys up (because, Mommy brain), and in 2 or 3 months we’ll go back and swap the toys currently in our house with the toys that are now in storage. It’ll be like Christmas in June!
I know what you’re thinking: How can someone find the time to do this? But seriously, packing up the toys didn’t take very long at all. I think I did it after everyone went to bed one night. The kids were a little confused about why their toys were in a box, but they mostly had fun jumping off the boxes. Because my kids are animals.
Our living space is still not something I would describe as “tidy”, but we’re a lot closer! Not only that, there is more space for the kids to play and with fewer toys to find places for, it’s easier for them to help with clean-up.
I don’t know about you, but toy organization and storage is an ongoing dilemma around here. I’m sharing this system because it works for us, but I’m wondering if you have any good ideas as well?
