Organizing Kids Toys

If you have children, you understand the never ending process of trying to organize and store their toys. I am always in search of new ways to keep the toys together and keep my house looking somewhat tidy. I decided to do a complete redo of our toy storage the day after Christmas. Our little ones received lots of wonderful new toys for their birthday and Christmas and we needed a place to put them.

Operation Twin Town & Twin Gym was under way! A little history - we renamed our family room Twin Town shortly after they arrived and we realized our home would never be the same with the amount of stuff these little people required. A year later they claimed another room and that was named Twin Gym because of the foam mats, ball pit and slide. With two rooms to organize it was double the work but double the satisfaction when it was complete! 

My Top Three Tips for Organizing Kids Toys:

1. Keep toys easily accessible for the little ones. This way they can get the most out of their toys. Store toys in bins that are low and easy to reach. Same goes for books so they can reach them and read as much as they want.

2. Keep like items together. This gives the little ones a sense of order. They know when they pull out the doll bin, it will have all dolls and doll accessories. Or the train bin has all of the trains and train tracks. Plus it makes clean up a breeze!

3. Go through toys frequently and move out toys they no longer play with. It will be help keep things de cluttered and easier to play with because they won't have to weed through the items they no longer are interested in.

Twin Town Storage - You can purchase the storage container on the left at Target and Fred Meyer/Kroger. And you can usually find sales on the colored bins. The organizer on the right is from Target. My husband anchors the shelving into the wall so it cannot tip over on the kids.

I love having books easily accessible for them. They have another shelf in their room filled with books. I have always been an avid reader and we hope to instill that trait in them too.

There are a few shelves under our TV in the armoir and I use every bit of shelf space I can. These bins are from Container Store.

Twin Gym Storage - same shelf unit as in the other room. See below for more on the puzzle racks.

 These are pictures of some of the bins we have. Some items are easily grouped - cars, blocks, stuffed animals, trains and train tracks, pots and pans and cooking utensils. Other groups are a bit more random - view masters with cell phones and cameras, all Leap Frog items, small character figurines, etc.

Under the TV I have two bins filled with all of their musical toys. It makes it easy to pull out one type of toy and have a musical play time. Or pull out all of the play food and they play at their table and kitchen set.

Also, if you have small items like the little board books in the upper right corner of the collage, put them in their own container. It helps keep them together and it is easier to store that way.

I have seen a version of puzzle racks like this for sale from Melissa and Doug. These were from my scrap booking days. Not to say I have officially retired from scrap booking, it is just my need for 12 x 12 paper is not as important as it used to be. I felt like the kids weren't getting as much use out of their puzzles as they could be. They were in bins under their beds and were hardly ever touched. This way they are organized and easy to see and play with. I got these racks 10 years ago on EBay from a woman who was selling her scrap booking store. Here is a link to a place you can buy the Melissa and Doug racks.

I remove all of the puzzle pieces from each puzzle and put them in zip pouches. We store all of the pouches in one of our colored bins. I found the pouches at Office Max. This helps so we don't lose puzzle pieces and it makes it easy to grab a few puzzles and pouches and put them in the suitcase for travel or take them on the road with us.

Hope this gives you a little inspiration for your toy organization. If you have any great toy organizing tips, leave a comment. I would love to hear them! I am always looking for new ideas.

Happy Organizing!