So… why didn’t I blog this morning like usual? Because WHOOT! I was cleaning out the playroom! Fun for the whole family. Really. (not!) I try to do a good job on it once a quarter, but it usually happens only twice a year. This is when I go through every bin and resort, throw out stuff, move furniture to vacuum and get rid of old toys. Today we did it under the guise of “getting ready for New Toys”. But I really do it because if our toys aren’t organized, the kids don’t play with them. They can’t play with what they can’t “see”.

So I thought I’d share a little bit of my organization system. The main key to my system is that all the toys are either in the kids’ rooms or in the playroom. They take toys to other parts of the house, but their “home” is in these rooms and we have trained the kids pretty well to mostly play in the playroom. If we keep it nice and organized they actually want to be in there because it feels good.

See the wall shelves? See how some are very high? You may be thinking “Why would she do that? Doesn’t make sense in a kids play room.” Au Contraire!! This is where I put toys with lots of pieces when my kids were under four to save my sanity. That way, when they wanted to play with a messy toy, I had to bring it down for them. And then they had to clean it up so I could put it back when they were finished. Really works well. Now I use the top shelf for pretty looking stuffed animals and toys I am “cycling in and out”. So if it’s a toy that needs a “break” it goes on the high shelf till the next time we “recycle”.

For the first time, since Noah is now 4 ½ I am moving the “little Knex” and “little Legos” and some of the puzzles down to the bottom shelf. High enough for Noah to reach, but still out of reach for our little friends who come and visit and play toys. We’ll see how that works. I’ll report back.

We have hooks on the walls for purses, backpacks and bags. We have books I “cycle in” into the bookshelf. We only keep one shelf of books at a time because I have found that if there are two many, the kids just don’t use them.

Each kid has his or her own wire shelf. Everything has bins…and we try REALLY HARD to have “miscellaneous bins”. They start out empty. Actually, when the miscellaneous bins get full, that’s my key to know that it’s time to do a cleaning.

I got these awesome baskets on sale at Target for like fifty cents and we love them. We have a basket for cars and a basket for “little people and animals”. I’ve found the key to successful basket management is to make sure you have a basket that has “room to grow” so as your kids collect more McDonald toys, there is a place to put them.

All my kids help with the cleaning. The other key to my organizational system is that we have pictures on the bigger bins and everyone in my family (including my husband) knows where things go. You can see under the wire shelf above our “Transportation Bin” where all things transportation go. It takes me longer to actually include them (yes, both the husband and the kids!) in this cleaning project, but it pays for itself down the road because they understand where things go. Although it took us me three four hours to do this project, we really do feel all accomplished!

Related posts:

  1. Organizational Zen
    2.    You know what gives me energy? ...
  2. Toy Store List Rant
    3.    I miss my local Zany Brainy. Sure they...
  3. Sea of Papercuts?
    4.   Thought for the day: If you drown in a sea...