Organizing a Playroom

I know my kids have way too much stuff! So much so that we actually bought our house because of the "gameroom" upstairs. It became our playroom where my kiddos hang out and it houses all of their toys.

For many months I searched and searched for the best way to organize their toys and make it easy for them to clean up. As long as I get them to pick up at night before bed, it will stay cleaned up. Here's a few ideas to use for your kid's playroom/bedroom toys...

We use ALOT of baskets at my house! For the playroom, I went to Target and bought color coded baskets. When my twins came along, we always put one in blue and one in green, so those became their "colors". My princess of a daughter of course loves pink. I got lucky when we went to Target, because they had a whole display of baskets, tubs and other stuff in those three colors!

I bought large rolling baskets for the big things like Tonka Trucks, Thomas the Trains (we have tons!), and other large construction trucks. For smaller items we use small bins and baskets. In these, I've seperated like items. Flashlights, small cars, and so on. To store all the bins, I purchased $18 low bookshelves from Walmart. I didn't want to spend a fortune on furniture while they are little and beating stuff up, so these work great! I can fit 2 small bins per shelf and we also have all the games and books on there. We also put some bins on the bottom of our t.v. cabinet.

For all the arts and craft supplies, I used an old cabinet we had that has doors so I can close it all up and hide the mess! We use these for the pens, markers, and crayons. One section for each.

After sorting like items into bins, I found photo stickers at Lakeshore Learning Center that had toys and such on them. We (together) labeled each bin/basket with what goes in it. I also put a photo on cabinets and the wall where the dress up clothes are hung on pegs. All they have to do is look at the picture and it tells them what goes there. Easy Peasy!

The point of this whole post is that you don't need expensive things to store kid's toys! Shop garage sales and thrift stores. Like the shelves in our playroom, they were $18 a piece and each sheving unit holds 8 bins! That's a lot of toys!

Also, don't use boxes with lids. I only have two boxes with lids in our playroom. One for legos and one for Lincoln logs. Kids are less likey to pick things up if they have to take a lid off. I know it's easier to get my kids to pick up if they can just sit all the bins/baskets on the floor and toss stuff in! They actually taught me that! There was an empty Rubbermaid container in their room and one afternoon, the twins went in there by themselves and picked up! I was shocked! I asked them where they put all their toys and they said the toy box. Because they could just throw everything in that big box, they were more modivated to put toys away. It was easy and quick! Much better than having mom yell at them for hours to clean up!

So check out Target or Walmart next time your there and put on your "thinking cap" and you'll be surprised at what you can find!