Happy new year! This year has been crazy with teaching both remotely and in person, but I’ve made a goal to start blogging more. So hopefully I’ll be putting out content more regularly in 2021.
Last weekend was a long weekend, and I used it to go through and declutter the house. I’m sure I’m not the only mom who struggles with toy and mess everywhere. I spent some time looking through organizing ideas online and going shopping to find things to help me. Here’s the best of what I found.
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Hanging Closet Organizers
One of my biggest struggles was a towering shelf of games and puzzles. They were all on a shelf where Buddy couldn’t reach them. And after Christmas, we literally didn’t have enough space to add the new ones on the shelf. (And believe it or not, that wasn’t even all of our games and puzzles! There are three bins of rotated out toys and games in our crawl space as well.) I saw the idea of using a hanging closet organizer, and it was perfect! I actually got a 6 shelf one and a 3 shelf one to hold everything. (They are similar to this one and this one.) I also bought a couple of smaller baskets to slide into the 6 closet organizer to hold card games. This morning, I found Buddy playing with a logic puzzle game on his own while he was waiting for me to wake up. He wouldn’t have been able to get it down on his own before.
Clear Bins for Large Sets of Toys
We already have bins for our wooden trains, magnatiles, and duplos. Buddy is starting to get into Legos, so I bought a new bin for that. It’s great to have a place where all of the same type of toy can stay together.
Under Bed Storage
When Buddy went from a toddler bed to a full size bed, we lost floor space but gained a storage space. Buddy’s stuffed animals take over our whole house, so I bought a plastic rolling under bed storage container for them. At the end of the day, they can all be rolled away until Buddy is ready to play with them again.
Zippered Envelopes for Small Sets of Toys
We have always kept Buddy’s Duplo sets in their own box in his closet, and we’d rotate them out so we only had a couple out at a time. But now Buddy has added several Jurassic World Lego sets to the mix, and he won’t let me rotate those. To get rid of some of the boxes and clutter, I got these zippered envelopes. Each set when into an envelope with a picture from the box and the building instructions. Then they all went into a plastic bin.
Several years ago, I blogged about using plastic envelopes from the dollar store for wooden puzzle storage. I added some sticky velcro dots to help it close. Then I could store the puzzles vertically on the shelf. We’re past the stage of needing wooden puzzle storage, but I thought it was worth mentioning again. (You can read the whole blog here.)
Cube Shelves
When we set up Buddy’s nursery, we bought cube bookshelves from IKEA. I knew I wanted to have plenty of space for books and smaller toy bins that Buddy can easily get to by himself. I thought when we changed Buddy’s bed we’d have to adjust this bookshelf to be vertical, but I was pleasantly surprised that we still have space for it to be horizontal.
Clips for hanging art work
Now that Buddy is in kindergarten, he is constantly bringing home pieces of artwork. I’ve been using sticky tack to hang them, but that’s kind of a pain. I have to find the sticky tack, it falls down a lot, and when I’m ready to switch it out, the construction paper ruins the sticky tack. Then, I ran across these 3m wall paper clips. They are amazing! Now Buddy can hang things himself and it’s easy to change out the art work.
Baskets for toy storage
The last thing I got to organize our toy clutter is a large basket for our living room. During the last year we have brought our Little Tykes basketball hoop inside to give us something active to do inside when it was cold outside (and we were stuck at home due to a pandemic anyway.) At Christmas, we added a putting green to that area of our house. But the balls were always rolling all over the floor. Now we have a large basket so they are easy to find when needed, but we are no longer tripping over balls when we are in the living room.
Do you have any great suggestions for getting your toys organized? If so, please leave a comment!
