Day 9- toy organizing challenge.

Toys.

They can drive a parent mad.  My kids have come to an age where they can understand picking up toys.  However.  Now they play with barbies, little pets shops, polly pockets, matchbox cars, and, wait for it.............. LEGOs.  We wish we could have a playroom.  Just not feasable in our house though.  We've thought about putting a playroom in our sub basement.  However with a 3 and 5 yo, we don't want them 3 floors below us playing when we are upstairs.  And we don't want them to get into all of our storage items down there.  And toys will always end up upstairs anyway, which is where they are now.  Through the whole house.

All those little pieces.  My rule is if it is on the floor when I am vacuuming... bye bye.

So here are some befores:



Girl's Room

Target bookshelf.  The bins have dress-up clothes.  The lower shelves have coloring books, binder with art supplies, Tag reader, Starfall readers.



Bookshelf that came with bedroom set.  Contains...Books.  Which need to be straightened again.  On top is her CD player...right now it is Enya for bedtime music, replacing the Glee Christmas soundtrack.  The lower drawers hold purses. Her little floor pillow on the right.  I made that.




Previously mentioned barbies, pet shops, and legos.



Barbie vet and toybox.  She has dolls and some dog clothes in the toybox.  I forgot to show you her net.  I highly recommend one for stuffed animals.  It is in the corner on the celiing.  Her stuffed animals (all dogs) go up there except the ones currently playing with (like 20).  But they go in the net for time outs.  Very effective.



Drives me crazy that she shoves things unde the dresser to make her room appear clean.  She is five, though.



Here is her bench after we put all of her barbies/petshops/legos in the appropriate bins.  Better.

Boy's Room

Note the cute toy box.  Easy to just throw things in, but not really organized.  Hubby needs to learn that football tent does not belong behind here.

Bins of books.  The red one is for library books

More bins of books.  And see, tons of books behind glider.  And there are books in the cabinet of the night stand.

Boy's closet.  I cought the closetmaid shelves when boy moved to toddler bed.  He stopped napping once he had access to toys during naptime.  Now many of them are locked in the closet.  I am thinking about adding picture labels to all the bins, though.

 I need to break down and get him a real bookshelf.  we have one in our office I may paint blue and red.  Or I may look for one at Target.  I am thinking about getting rid of the glider and putting the bookshelf there.  He still likes to read betime books there, though.

And, ugh.  Legos.  My almost 3yo son got two Lego sets from family that were Lego City for 5-8yo.  Sorry, but those went back in the very back of the closet where he can't find them.  Luckily Santa knew he was almost three and got him the Cars duplo set.

 Toy Chest

So this is really a TV chest.  We have this in our entry living room.  It was a hand me down from my MIL.  Note all the bags of girl scout cookies.  Those are staying up top until I can get the cookies delivered.

Here is the inside.  I did go through this before Christmas and got rid of quite a few things.  Donated games and puzzles to the school.  We have those metal wire divider shelvf things.

Here is the puzzle/game shelf after cleaning it out and organizing.

Lincoln Logs that got recycled down to us.  Thankfully, they cam in their own bin!

Thank god tinkertoys come already in a bin.  Jeez!  And did you know that nowdays they are plastic?  Not wood.  I was shocked!  And more puzzles and games.  Those wooden name puzzles are great for helping kids learn to spell their names.

After I rid the kids of more toys (poor things!)  and organized a bit.

So that was my project for the day.  No, I didn't clean up all those messes.  Just the ones I showed you : )  If you have any ideas for rounding up our toys, please leave me a comment : ) 

For more ideas for organizing toys, please check out:

I know I will!