Within Your Walls

Christmas is over, and if you’re a parent I’m sure the next phrase has already been uttered from your mouth, “Where are we going to put all of these new toys?”  Don’t worry your not alone.  I go through this twice a year, at birthdays and Christmas.  I’ll show you a few things I do, so you can help the new members of your family fit in.

Toys, Toys, Toys, if you have a child under the age of 6 they are everywhere!  Putting toys away is a big deal in any house, but finding a place for them is where the problem begins.  Boxes, bins, and shelves, there are so many options from cheap and unsightly to expensive and beautiful.  We all want our toy storage to either look like we don’t have children or we have the perfect child who doesn’t make a mess.  Neither is realistic, so lets go over our options.

1. Cheap- you can line you house with Rubbermaid, but it look about what it costs, CHEAP!  And even though you don’t have a lot of money, you still want to have stylish surroundings.
2. Midrange- gaining in popularity is the bin system.  It looks a bit like a preschool has invaded you house, but your child is happy, because now he/she can actually find the toy they were looking for, and in fact they may start to put toys away.
3. Expensive/outrageous- this category shouldn’t even exist.  I never could understand why anyone would pay $300.00 for a toy chest!  It is a waste of good money, particularly when you figure it’s all made in a foreign land for pennies of what they are charging us.

So, looking at our options, any realistic person would choose a combination of 1 & 2.  Which is exactly what my husband and I did.  We have it all, the bins and the shelves.   They don’t look terribly out of place and both my daughter and I have an inventory of what she has, in the order of toys.  None of the options I’m going to show you will be out of your price range, they are realistic and practical.  They are also available at the retailers you already shop at, most on a weekly basis.

Target, Wal-Mart, and Toys-r-us, these are stores all parents know and shop at for most of their child’s needs and wants.   My first purchase for toy organization happened after my daughters 1^st birthday…do you have any idea how many toys there are for a 1yr old?  I now know, A LOT!  Our meager little basket wasn’t going to cut it anymore.  I did some research on bin style toy organizers, I found prices from $40.00-$130.00 and finally settled on a deluxe organizer from Toys-R-Us at $50.00.  It has 20 bins (12 regular and 4 double sized bins) and it fits a lot of toys.  The next purchase was due to amount of books our daughter was now accumulating, so off to Target we went.  A $70.00 2-shelf bookshelf was a perfect fit, tasteful enough to fit in with our current décor and survive future trends, without busting my wallet.  Great for books as well as puzzles, games, and other large items.  Bookshelves are a multi-purpose organizing tool.  The most recent purchase was from Wal-Mart.  This year, Santa brought our Daughter a Fisher-Price loving family dollhouse, with all the pieces!  So the obsessive compulsive in me noticed that all the pieces don’t fit in the dollhouse or in any other storage item we already owned.  Therefore our offspring was not going to put it away each and every night.  In order to lessen everyone’s frustrations, I bought a Rubbermaid 5-drawer organizer for $18.00.  It works great; she can reach it, open it, and even put things back (where they belong).  Mission accomplished!

I love child friendly toy organization.  It encourages them to clean up after they are done, mostly due to the fact that they can see it and find it.  The new bin organizers work much better than the toy chests we all grew up with.  You know, the ones where you would sooner reach China than the toy you wanted on the bottom, or better yet, only playing with the 5 toys on the top, leaving the rest to rot in toy anguish at the bottom of the vat.  However, these bin systems are also great for Parents too.  Toy clean up is quicker without having to sit on a chest just to close it, and spotting unused or unloved toys is effortless and uncomplicated.  Which brings me to my next point, what to do with the unwanted in your child’s life.

While you are finding new homes for the new toys, take stock in the old toys.  Are there toys your child doesn’t play with, grew out of, or just doesn’t like.  Instead of packing these misfits into a box and purging them to your attic never to be seen or heard from again, why not give them away.  First, look at the quality; if they were well used and abused: get rid of them.  The ones that make the cut have a chance at a new life.  Donations don’t have to be just to the good will.

1. Churches- if you belong to a church with a nursery they will gladly take gently used toys for the children to play with.
2. Low-Income Families- contact local services that may be able to take toys to families whom cannot afford toys for their children.
3. Daycares- (mostly private in home Daycares) welcome used toys with open arms.

Places like this offer a new life for your toys in place of purgatory in valuable storage space.

I hope I gave some logical storage options for your present toys as well as places to put the ones you want to get rid of.  Toy storage is key to having and organized home with a child. So make it fun and easy to use and both parties will be much happier.

Trackback URL

child friendly, Donate, Organization, organizations, Target, Toys, Toys-R-Us, Wal-Mart