I have three kids, but if you look at the never-ending trail of toys that flows through every room of my house, you would think I was running a day care with 50 kids! This week, however, I did make some great strides in organizing the girls’ toy boxes in their room!
Every toy now has an “easy to put away” place, and there is no more ocean of toys spread across their bedroom floor… and in their closet… and under their beds… and behind the furniture… and in their laundry baskets… and on top of their dressers… you get the idea! Here’s how I did it:
Step One: Pull out ALL of the toys and spread them out on the floor.
“Wait, what?! I thought we were cleaning, not making a bigger mess!!!” Yes, in fact, we are doing both! A true organizer will tell you that you need to start by making a much bigger mess than you already have. In order to be able to place things appropriately, you need to know how much room you need for each category of things. This requires you to be able to see it all at once, hence, dumping it all out on the floor.
Step Two: Group like things together.
For this project, I enlisted the help of my trusty Ziploc Bags. We used the gallon size bags, but you can use whatever size you need to store your belongings. I do find that the freezer bags are thicker, stronger and hold up a lot better than the regular storage bags, so that’s what we used.
The girls and I started grouping their toys into categories (i.e.- Chubby Puppies, Shopkins, etc.) and each category got its own Ziploc bag. Some categories had two bags if we couldn’t fit it all into one. For the leftover toys that didn’t fall into any category, (like yo-yo’s, fidget spinners, etc.) we made a “random toys” bag to store them in. We also set aside the items they no longer wanted so that we can donate them to charity.
Here’s what we ended up with when all was said and done:
Now it’s time for:
Step Three: Putting it all away.
Some of the toys had large pieces (like their Hotwheels racetrack and Chubby Puppies play set). We made a separate plastic bin for those larger items that wouldn’t fit in their toy box, and we tucked it into the bottom of their closet.
All of the Ziploc bags got put into their toy box, (as well as a couple of other games that were already in boxes) and there was actually room to spare!!! That was exciting!
And now, instead of tripping over a mountain of clutter in their room, we see this:
This organizational system not only keeps their room clean, but it also helps them to find what they are looking for when they want to play with something. For that reason, the girls were actually SUPER excited about this new system!
There are some rules that they need to follow in order to keep this system working.
- All bags must be completely sealed before putting them away. Otherwise, the toys would just spill out everywhere, and we’d be right back to where we started.
- They can only take out one category of toys at a time, and when they want to play something else, they need to put back the toys they were playing with before opening a new bag. This will help to make sure that the toys don’t get all mixed up again.
That’s basically it! It’s a pretty simple system that makes it easy for the kids to stay organized. It took a couple of hours to set up, but I feel that it was DEFINITELY time well spent!!!
Questions or comments? Please feel free to email me at anne@blessingsinsurprise.com, and I will get back to you just as soon as I can!