Need toy storage ideas....

[WDWorBUST]

My DD's room is overflowing. I know the first and most obvious solution is we need to get rid of stuff....but I also need to figure out how to organize it so she can find what she wants to play with. We have a tiny house (no exaggeration - less than 900 square feet) so our entire house is trashed out with toys. There has to be a good, space friendly solution for all this crap - HELP!!!

 

[PHXscuba]

Not knowing DD's age or size of room, I will try to give a few ideas. Our DDs shared a small room in our last house.

CLOSET: First we took off the closet doors and stored then in the garage. I used a small slice of closet space for their few Sunday dresses, then put an IKEA bookshelf in the closet under the existing rack. We filled it with bins and then put up a tension curtain rod and hung curtains so they could get at the toys easily but still close it off. We put a big bin for the dress-up clothes under the hanging dresses.

LOFT: A loft bed (or even a crib) has lots of space underneath. When our DDs were younger, they had doll strollers and cribs, bins of stuffed animals etc. We parked them under the 4-foot high loft bed as well as a short dresser. Shallow bins or sweater boxes fit under low beds.

Have you EVER seen a Barbie or Polly Pocket wearing shoes? I realized one day while sifting through the bottomless debris that none of these tiny things ever got used (except in my vacuum), so I threw them all out! Neither girl noticed. When they're not being played with, the dolls and their stuff are in bins that sit on the shelves of the dollhouse, which looks sort of like a bookshelf with a triangle roof (or convert a bookshelf).

I have another set of toy drawers for small toys like ponies, jewelry, the Happy Meal-type toys that seem to multiply.

My sister and BIL built a high shelf all the way around my niece's room to store trophies, special stuffed animals, etc. That way they are still preserved, but out of the way.

My DDs still share a room in our current home. Althought the closet and room are bigger, there's still a lot of junk! When I de-clutter, I try to toss/recycle/box up 1/3 of the stuff when I clean in spring and fall. I find that 1/3 is usually good because things get old, mismatched, not played with, broken, etc. so they don't even miss it.

PHXscuba

 

[ilandrazdsw]

I use laundry baskets and small bins for catch-alls. You can pick them up fairly cheap and in colors...green-dolls, blue-cars, etc. They can stack up too if need be.

 

[dzneelvr]

It's ideal to take a day when the kids are out of the house and PAINSTAKINGLY go through all the stuff. Seperate into broken/throw out, ok/give away, and ok/keep. Then you can purchase and label anything from plastic tubs to the new giant zip-loc bags and store them where you can or make some neat displays (I did that with a few of DDs classic Barbies and DSs lego "creations"). Seriously, the real work is sifting through it all without interruptions, so motivate yourself with some good tunes, hot coffee, and willpower

 

[mom2meiko]

we have been looking for the "perfect" solution as well. i think we are going to end up doing what my sis did. she got cube style bookshelves and stacked them (you can get them in varying lengths of 1 - 4 cubes i believe). then she uses baskets (from target) for the smaller items and just the plain old cubes for books, large items, etc.

you could also look for under the bed storage baskets or even a toy hammock? just some thoughts...

good luck!

 

[aidtrismommy]

We have 2 of those shelves from target that have a number of different color/size bins that set in the shelf. They are always open so your kids can see whats there and that means mostly everything will get played with because they are not put away where the kids can't find them. Those really hold the majority of their smaller toys. I only have 1 chest of drawers in their room (they will be sharing as soon as DS leaves his crib which is in my room) All of their clothes are in the closet, I bough an extra rod that hangs lower than the top rod , all of my older sons clothes are hanging on top (pants too) and the little boys clothes are on the bottom rack. The only things in their chest are underwear/socks, blankets, sheets, pj's. Having less furniture in their room frees up so much space. I also have a tall skinny shelf in the closet that stores shoes, clothes that are too big for the little guy, dinosaurs, diapers, wipes. So besides the 2 twin beds, there is the chest and a small bookshelf. It is way less cluttered and that makes for happier kids.

 

[chicagoshannon]

I highly recommend the cube bookshelves (I think they're called cubicals) from Target. They're on sale often for $39.99. There are 9 cubes- 3, 3, and 3 and you can get the canvas bins to fit in them too. They are fantastic. They hold much more then the plastic open bin organizer.

 

[zoemurr]

It's ideal to take a day when the kids are out of the house and PAINSTAKINGLY go through all the stuff. Seperate into broken/throw out, ok/give away, and ok/keep. Then you can purchase and label anything from plastic tubs to the new giant zip-loc bags and store them where you can or make some neat displays (I did that with a few of DDs classic Barbies and DSs lego "creations"). Seriously, the real work is sifting through it all without interruptions, so motivate yourself with some good tunes, hot coffee, and willpower

and put everything "I" think they don't need into bags in a spare room and leave it there for a month or so. If during that month they miss anything that is in the bag they can have it back. Usually they each miss one or two small things, and the rest goes out.

 

[tinkerlisa]

LMAO! I just hauled out my kids room the other day! It took me 6 hours!
I went to target and bought the bins i needed and said to myself: "this will take me 2 hours tops" Boy was I wrong!
I threw out broken toys, and the ones they outgrew, I brought to the give and take at our local recycling center.
I used 3 underbed storage bins. 2 were able to be stacked under my sons crib, the other went under my other sons bed. We have a pet net net in one corner of the room that we shove all stuffed animals into. The rule is that once a week they can change whatever stuffed friend they want. I limit them to 2 at a time. That way, the animals seem to get played with and they aren't all over the place. We use my older sons top drawer for little toys my youngest can't play with, but since these things are so small, my son can't find what he puts in there. So I bought a drawer organizer. I put his socks and undies in it and that way the other half he can find his little toys like Bakugan(which I bought a carry case for)
We have a small house as well(less than 900 sq ft) and its only 2 bedrooms. What makes it hard is my kids are 5 years apart, and they share a room. Keeping their toys separate is a pain!
As I was going through their toys(cursing the toys I should say) I realized that even though they have so much stuff(mainly the toys) they will eventually grow out of them. Then my kids will be grown and I will miss those stupid toys...

 

[Tiffany_PartyOf7]

We bought 2 sets of these - http://www.potterybarnkids.com/products/sw7205/index.cfm?pkey=cplayroom-storage-wall-systems|k

If you get there when they are redoing the store with the new seasons stuff, you can buy the floor model pretty cheap Ours came perfect and I figured my kids would probably destroy it anyways - they do everything else haha. But it still looks perfect after over a year of use and however long it was on the floor at the store.

We bought their canvas buckets for each cubby so nothing is showing - they can just throw their junk into the buckets and the buckets shove into the cubby

I absolutely love it and think it makes our kids playroom perfect!

 

[jpkkld]

Ha! I could have written your post - right down to the 900 sqft! You didn't mention your dd's age or what kind of storage you already have, so I'll just tell you how we've accomodated the kid stuff up to now. Our dd is almost 4 1/2 and the toys started becoming a major problem around her 3rd birthday.

1 - The living room is toy free. This is strictly for my own sanity. She can play in there, but the toys must be GONE by dinnertime.
2 - We have an island in the kitchen. One shelf is for kitchen-type toys - play food, play appliances, cash register. Also used for art supplies until recently. Art stuff is now in a 3-drawer rolling cart that slides under our easel.
3 - We have a tiny useless space off the kitchen. It's basically an extra wide hallway. That is our "play pit". Dh built a large shelving unit that can accomodate anything 16" deep x 16" tall, with lots of smaller shelves too. I actually bought the storage containers FIRST - some fabric cubes, some plastic totes. I bought a couple extra, anticipating toys she wasn't yet playing with, but would be soon (like Barbies and legos). We then built the shelf to accomodate every toy we could imagine wanting to put there!
4 - Once the shelf was built and full, we established a rule: Anything new will REPLACE something old. We made sure all the relatives knew this too. My MIL is notorious for filling our house with garage sale "finds". We did our best to explain that anything new will require dd to throw something away.
5 - My dd's bedroom is a study in storage solutions! There is no closet, so we stacked a 5-ft "laundry" cabinet on top of her small dresser, making our own armoire. 4 shallow drawers, 3 feet (wide) of hanging space, room for shoes in the bottom of the hanging space, and 2 large shelves above for the next 2 season's worth of clothes (too-small clothes go to a bin in my closet to be passed on twice a year).
6 - Dd's bed has drawers built in underneath that are perfect for dress-up clothes (just cram 'em in). We also got the matching headboard for: jewelry box, GIGANTIC Disney princess musical snowglobe (MIL), books, tissues, misc. "special" stuff (like rocks, pompoms, ribbons, boxes, anything she just LOVES at the moment).
7 - We got a 6-ft bookcase for her room - lower sheves house books, coloring stuff, beading supplies, craft supplies (all in bins). Upper shelves hold special toys like her piggy bank and special plush toys, plus extra bedding supplies.
8 - The toy "box" in her bedroom is the style that has 3 bins below, and the top lifts to show a shallow storage space. We use the bins for doll clothes and one "junk" bin. We don't use the upper storage, because there's a dollhouse on top. But someday, that space may be good for school supplies, and I could make a cushion for a seated reading area.
9 - Stuffed animals live in one of those net things. She rarely plays with them anyway. I threw out half a year ago, and she never noticed.
10 - We have a hanging mesh shelf thing and a couple wall-mounted shelves too - just to get more stuff off the floor.
11 - If I could have afforded it, I would have bought a child table with built-in storage. The plain table works fine, but I just see it as wasted storage space!

And finally, we are fairly strict about cleaning up. We use a reward system to help her, and we remind her to start tidying while we make dinner each night. Our house is still cluttered, but I think that's just a family thing. I suppose I'll miss it someday.
Good luck!

 

[SCHBR'smom]

IKEA...... it worked wonders for my oldest DD who has too much "stuff" and keeps everything. We got the Pax shelving system around the Hemnes daybed. She has 3 huge drawers in the bed to hold "stuff" and we can configure the shelves however works best for us. We have some bins, some drawers, some selves, boxes.... and the best part is that it has doors to hide it all. I LOVE IT!!!! We even got some Pax system for the play room. It's not perfect because some things have to stay out, such as the kitchen and doll house, but all the little stuff and games go in it and the doors close. Our youngest DD's room is the smallest in the house, and eventually she'll probably get the same thing just because it holds so much.

 

[emmettsmommy]

The Ikea Expedit shelves are wonderful for toys. They're great because you can use baskets for small toys and just load the other shelves up with toys. I purchased two for my son's room and I'm amazed how much they have cut down on the clutter in his room.

 

[Bektasmic]

We have three of those IKEA shelves (for a total of 48 open cubes) and they work with the canvas Cubicle boxkets from Target just perfectly. when my DS was little, I took poloroids of the type of toy in the basket and then hole punched and tied with twine on the front pull of the basket. Uniform look, plus he knew what was in there before pulling it out and also what type of toy went in each basket. The bigger stuff (Rescue Hero station, puppet theater, etc...) fits nicely on top, which was okay since that was the stuff I wanted him to ask for anyway.

Also recommend bed risers with big plastic bins under bed for stuffed animals, legos, "guys," cars, or other stuff that might not go so nicely into a cubicle container.

We do a cleanout before every b-day and christmas...DS believes he will get more stuff if he gets rid of more stuff. and maybe, just maybe I fostered that by saying that Santa won't bring him anything if there aren't any open spaces on his shelves.

 

[WDWorBUST]

We don't have IKEA's around here - at least I've never seen one. How much do the shelves run? And do you have to put them together - or do they come assembled?

 

[ekatiel]

I highly recommend the cube bookshelves (I think they're called cubicals) from Target. They're on sale often for $39.99. There are 9 cubes- 3, 3, and 3 and you can get the canvas bins to fit in them too. They are fantastic. They hold much more then the plastic open bin organizer.

ITA. These things are great. Here's a picture of ours in our playroom (we actually have more bins now-- we just bought another 3X3 and set it next to the first one).

For the stuff that's too big for the fabric bins, I bought the plastic "rope tubs" from Walmart. Here's a link to what they look like: http://www.doityourself.com/invt/5207220

HTH! --Katie

 

[Fabinva]

Posted by WDWorBUST We don't have IKEA's around here - at least I've never seen one. How much do the shelves run? And do you have to put them together - or do they come assembled?

Most of IKEA furniture has to be assembled. I love the store but husband hates putting things together so usually I am the one that ends up doing that and it isn't that hard. They do have great storage solutions and ideas for kid's rooms.