5 Simple Steps to Organized Toys

Even though in the past weeks we have seen unusually cold weather around here, spring is definitely approaching and with it, the fever to clean and create more organized toys.

Call me crazy, but I absolutely love an orderly, clean house and neatly organized closets, pantries, cabinets and drawers.

I used to have a whole lot more time to practice my perfectionist tendencies. In my previous life, I was the woman you’d find cleaning baseboards, stacking and re-stacking her linen closets, and searching for ideas online to become even more efficient.

Adding kids changed me, but I still strive for simple and uncluttered.

I want to give you a few pointers to easily and effectively bring order into your kids’ rooms, especially concerning toys.

Please note that my children are just as messy as everybody else’s and coming over to our home you would definitely find belongings scattered everywhere, because … we live at our house.

The suggestions below are my goals I try my best to keep up with.

Let’s begin!

Take Back Control Over Toys by Reducing Them!

As mothers of young children, we are constantly looking for ways to control the chaos, and why not start right where it all begins.

In today’s society, it’s easy to adopt the mindset that more is better. Since free gadgets come home even from restaurants we dine at, before we know it our kids end up with so many toys that they cannot even remember what’s in the closet or on the bottom of the toy chest.

I know I am probably way too obsessive in my efforts to rid our house of cheap plastic and noisy, non-imaginative toys, but I firmly believe everybody can benefit from taking a long, hard look at the toy stash — and then purging.

It’s important to note that decluttering is not a one-time action, it’s a lifestyle.

Evaluation and purging have to be done on a regular basis to keep on top of the mess. When our children have way too many toys to choose from and actively engage with, let along clean up, we will always stay a few steps behind. And this brings me to my next point.

Consider a Toy Rotation

This method is by far the best way I’ve found to simplify my life and encourage my children to appreciate their toys.

After I thoroughly inspected and streamlined the toys that stay in the house, I separated them into two categories: everyday toys and sometimes toys.

You know your children best, so I won’t tell you exactly what to choose here. But to give you an example, my kids would play with horses and a barn, cars, play foods and trains for forever. These are currently their most cherished toys, and they all made it onto our shelves for daily play. (As their preferences change, I will rotate those out and exchange them to new favorites).

I put all the rest of their belongings in the closet — organized, of course. I take those out whenever they ask me to. Or, if they don’t remember that we have them, I use a few at a time for distraction when I really need them to be occupied. The toys seem like new and for us this works wonderfully, because the cleanup is not overwhelming and every single toy is played with. You could also put a tote full of toys up in the attic and just change the toys out entirely every month or so.

If you happen to have toys that nobody remembers or asks for after months being tucked away, consider it a great chance to donate!

I know these two steps may seem simple, but they can be time-consuming and even difficult emotionally as you decide what to keep and what to part with.

Group Like Items Together

This is pretty straightforward, but it will help so much in actually finding what you are looking for. It also aids kids to learn that things have a “home” in our house and that whenever playing is finished, the toy needs to return there. For example, I grouped all plastic toy foods together, and all wood toy foods separately from them. Or I collected all the tiny cars and organized them separately from trucks. You get the picture.

Choose Your Storage Containers and Labels

For this, we have an inexpensive IKEA shelving system, some colorful Target bins and Dollar Store shoeboxes. I also used these self-laminating sheets to attach a label to each bin and box.

I was inspired by this fantastic tutorial from Org Junkie and printed out these printables. If you don’t find a picture to a particular group of toys, you can easily copy pictures off of Amazon into a Word document, print, cut, laminate and you are all set. (I did this with our horses, tea sets, Dora toys and such,)

I punched a hole in each laminated label and attached it with a string, or just taped it to the corresponding box, like so:

I love to see the kids look at the pictures and know exactly where to put their toys.

Purge Regularly, Clean up Daily and Be a Good Example!

I already mentioned this earlier: Controlling clutter should be a continuous goal, because stuff continuously makes it into our homes.

You may choose to apply the “one item in, one item out” rule, so you can always keep about the same amount of objects in your organized bins and boxes. You may like the idea of a monthly evaluation, in order to decide what you intend to keep.

Cleaning up the kids’ room daily, although not always realistic, is essential to staying organized and it truly puts your  organizational system into work.

We are learning to pick up at least one group of toys before bringing out another one, but I don’t always enforce that. I also try my best to be the first one to start the pick up each night in order to be a good role model. We sing songs or play a “who is the fastest” game to encourage the kids. We usually ask them to pick up 2 kinds of toys (such as all the horses, or all the toy food) so it’s not overwhelming.

As they grow, of course, more is expected, but for now, we are laying the foundation.

Another great idea to help children see through a seemingly endless pile of toys is to pick a letter and clean up those toys first that start with that letter.

Any way you choose to do it, the most important is to be consistent in teaching orderliness and show an example yourself. I hope some of these ideas help inspire you, but make the system work for you!

Happy organizing, mamas! What tips would you add to the list?