Help with Toy Organization!

I have a rolling cart with drawers. I just cleaned it out and threw a bunch of toys away that had missing pieces, toys that weren't being played with, and now we have a little more room for the new stuff from Christmas. I don't know about you and others, but I like to purge every now and then. You know which toys are played with the most, which are the favorites and which ones are collecting dust. Out with the old so there is room for the new,that is my motto. Good luck. I know it can be overwhelming!

I have one huge bin for all the toys. If there are toys that do not fit in it, it goes away. Less for me to clean up. I focus on the ones they play with a lot and keep more so the big toys. I like for them use their imagination

We went and got a little chest of drawers from Kmart for my daughter doll stuff... shoes in one drawer, clothes in another, accessories in another, etc. She actually kept it clean cause it made it easier for her to find stuff that way.

We also have a big wire rack with compartments in the play room, each compartment has different stuff in it, puzzles in one, stuffed animals in another, etc.

It may not always stay clean, but if you label all the bins, the kids will know where to put things when you tell them to clean the room, instead of shoving little peices everywhere. Glad ware and rubbermaid are a mom's best friends!

We are obsessed with the "Itso" storage from Target. We have the plastic cubes stacked in 2 x 2 with shelving and varied sizes of drawers. The big drawers hold "big toys" like instruments, blocks, trucks and dinosaurs. The small drawers keep stickers, crayons and "little toys" in order!

They are pretty reasonable and come in tons of colors and patterns.

I did a couple things. I bought some bins with lids that had handles on them. They are big enough to store quite a few items and small enough the kids are able to carry them around. (Think like the size of a portable file case. I bought like 4 of them. I put all of the my little ponies in one, small dolls in another, puzzles/magnetic dolls in another, and then I had barbies & clothes in another. If we had a lot of blocks, I would put them in one of these cases also. The nice thing about these cases is the kids can bring them out to the living room, play with the toys, then pick them up and take them back to the playroom.

But over Christmas my daughter got a ton more barbies & barbie clothes. I was going to buy one of those rolling barbie cases but my SIL gave me the idea of buying one of those hard case luggage on rollers, and this works perfectly. In the big part my daughter puts all her barbies. Then it has a zipper pouch where she puts all of barbies clothes & accessories. She even has her brat and moxie girls in there.

Oh and we have a lot of dress up clothing. I just bought a rolling laundry basket that has handles and now we shove all the clothes in there. I'm going to put the necklaces, purses, etc. in one of the carrying tubs with handles.

i bought several small, but different sized boxes, at walmart. the clear plastic kind, with the white snap on lids, that are easy to take on and off (probably used for like shoe storage or office supplies) they are really cheap under a $1 each. I then had my talented artsy sister in law draw pictures of what type of toy is to go in each (i.e.- we have a "block" box, toy "cars" box, an "art" box with playdoh, crayons, stickers, etc, etc). my son is only 2 so he cant read yet, but we wrote the word for each on the top too, for that blessed day when he can, but for now the pictures are good enough.

We save shoe boxes to house the little toys. The shoe boxes get reused, and you don't have to spend more money buying boxes for the toys.

If your child is too young to read, tape pictures to the boxes of what's in it, and also tape up the edges of the lids to keep them from ripping. You can even organize groups of small miscellaneous items in plastic ziploc bags and then put several bags in one shoe box.