Do you ever feel like it’s a constant struggle to keep your kid’s toys cleaned up and organized? Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is pick up toys. My boys are getting better at cleaning up but I have a 1 year old little girl that loves to pull all the toys out of her toy box.
When we moved last year, we moved into a much smaller house. We had to figure out a way to organize our toys and make it easy for our kids to be able to help clean up. Here are my ten tips for de-cluttering and organizing toys.
- Prepare – Buy some plastic or cloth cubes. We bought some Yaffa blocks from a friend. The only problem was that they were purple and they were going to go in the boys room. So we went to Home Depot and found spray paint for plastic. We painted them black so they would match the room.
- Organize – We set out the blocks and separated each toys into a box. We had Toy Story toys, dress up stuff, play dough, action figures, etc.
- Label – We got some paper and my husband drew a picture of the type of toy that was supposed to be in each Yaffa block. He also wrote the name of the toy category that belonged in the box. This made it easier for people to clean up even if they can’t read.
- Set it up – We had a friend build us a piece of furniture that can hold the Yaffa blocks. You can buy these but for us it was cheaper. He built it 5 boxes across and 3 down. We do not have enough Yaffa blocks to fill the holes but it’s better that way. We are able to use some of the empty cubes to put books or other larger items that will not fit into the Yaffa blocks. I love this piece of furniture. It saves us a lot of space and we are able to see the toys in the Yaffa blocks.
- Rotate your toys – Since I have 3 kids, they are always interested in different toys. If I have toys hidden in the closet and switch them out every once and a while they feel like they have a whole new set of toys.
- Double duty storage – We have a few pieces of furniture that don’t look like they have toys in them. We have an ottoman and a wood chest in the living room that holds some of the kids toys. We can also use it as a foot rest or as an extra seat.
- Donate – I often wonder how often my kids really play with the toys we have. It is a good idea to donate you toys.
- Throw stuff away – Every few months I will go through my kids toys and throw away broken toys or Happy Meal toys that they don’t ever play with.
- Designate an area for stuffed animals – I feel like my kids have a million stuffed animals. I have a tall laundry basket for the stuffed animals. This makes it easy to just throw the stuffed animals in a container so it’s out of the way.
- Keep board games out of reach of smaller kids – We have lost so many game pieces because our kids like to play with the little characters in the games. Have an area of your house just for games.
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