With the 4 little persons that inhabit my home we have somehow accumulated a ridiculous amount of toys. I have pared them down to their absolute favorites (super heroes, dress-up, Mini-Ponies, etc.), my favorite toys for them (wooden train sets, magnetic dressing dolls, etc.), not to mention all of my learning sets (Cuisinaire blocks, sentence building blocks, math manipulatives, etc.). It had gotten out of control. I’ve tried several different ways to contain them, but I think I’ve found my favorite so far. It has worked for quite awhile beautifully and I thought I’d share!
We have a toy closet.
It’s not pretty, people, but it’s functional. And the boxes underneath the shelf are our clothes for next season, just ignore those! And take a good look at that shelf – I used my first power tool to try to cut that sucker to fit. In.My.Closet. I was so worried about my former mishaps with closets that I took the phone in there and shut the door, so that if there was a bloody accident that I could make an emergency call without my children even knowing. Smart, huh?
Which used to be my sewing closet, but I moved it, I know, shocking. This closet is in my room. Where I have control over what goes in and comes out. With my littlest man, I need to know where every single lego, piece of playdough, and Mr. Potato part is. at. all. times. I separated them into buckets according to sets of toys and then put them away. Now they can ask for a bucket or two at a time and I can monitor the mess and make sure if it’s small toy parts that they don’t make it into busy toddler boy’s mouth.
To the right is a shoe hangy thingy that I have separated puzzles into ziplocks and put into the pockets.
To take it a step further I want to print off pictures and names of each bucket (kind of like I made the chore cards – that didn’t work for me long-term) and stick them in a book with sheet protectors so that they can look through it and pick what they want to play with (like a catalog). This would allow further control of the closet since they want to go in, look around, and in that time TheBaby-est has wandered in and started dumping buckets – argh! But that’s a project for another day.
To read more good ideas – go to Works For Me Wednesday!
(Okay, people, I know that I’m not even on the right wfmw, but c’mon, this is not a “how to make sure you’re on the right day” post. I already had it typed when I realized she had a schedule. Who knew? So, I’m publishing today and then I’ll republish and link on her site on December 3rd. I do love leftovers after all.)
