There is so much to think about as a new parent (or even a veteran one!) that sometimes certain things go under the radar.
One frustrating area can be children’s toys, aka kids’ chaos: both the sheer number they accumulate from the usual suspects such as grandparents, and their ability to get underfoot at the most inconvenient times.
I always do a pre-Christmas toy blitz to try and keep things under control, but with four little people in the house it’s not always easy staying on top of things.
This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you buy something after clicking on a link, I’ll earn a few pennies to help me keep creating posts like this, at no extra cost to you!
Getting these toys organised can seem much easier said than done, so in this collaborative post here are a few tips based on our experience, which you might find useful.
3 simple ways to bring order to kids’ chaos
1. Separate your child’s favourite toys
Yes, kids seem to have a huge number of toys, but you are likely to find that there are some which are distinct favourites among them. We found a useful first move was to identify these and store some of the rest away to give us breathing space to get organised. You might find that you need to rotate some of the toys in storage so that they get played with occasionally, and this means that some toys which may never have been played with at all will get some attention.
2. Choose the storage carefully
Having the toys stored away is better than having them strewn all over the floor, but we found that we had to choose our storage options carefully. When looking around, we found several options;
- Furniture with built-in storage – like a bookcase with a cupboard area at the bottom of it or an ottoman that could easily double as a toy chest. We could have also used old drawers as under-bed storage.
- Playmats – play mats can be folded or adapted to become toy storage bags, which we found extremely useful for small parts like Barbie accessories and Lego.
- Shelving – we also explored using height to increase the storage space for toys, and putting them on shelving made them easy to spot if we wanted to get a specific one down.
- Transparent boxes – we found these to be the best solution, as you can see what is inside them. They are easily stackable, and your children can fill these up themselves.
3. Label everything
Regardless of which storage medium you decide on, use some sort of labelling system so you know what has gone where. This is also useful for sorting your child’s toys into different types, such as building blocks, dolls, make-and-do craft, drawing and colouring books, etc.
We wanted to make sure we got everything labelled correctly, so we reached out to David at Label Planet who specialise in printer labels for his recommendations on which labels are best for the task – he recommended waterproof permanent labels as they’re durable once stuck on and don’t flake/wear-down if they get wet.
A few final thoughts
Organising your children’s toys can seem like a near-impossible task, but by identifying favourites and using the right storage solutions to keep the rest in order, you give yourself a good chance. You will also need to be able to identify what you have stored away so it can be retrieved when needed, so finding the right labelling solution is a must.
This is a collaborative post.
Leave A Comment