HOW TO ORGANIZE TOYS

Those Pinterest-perfect and Instagram-worthy pictures of beautifully organized toy closets and toy rooms with tons of bins all perfectly labeled are great for inspiration to get you and your kids organized. But, utilizing a plethora of bins, especially with lids, which are micro-organized to the color of a Barbie shoe are not ideal for having a realistic system that is easy to maintain. Toys are not only meant to entertain your children, they are also meant to educate and inspire creativity. Here is how to recognize the different types and quantities of toys which make sense to keep and how to properly organize them. And, did you know, you can also organize your spaces according to your organizing style? You can find out what your organizing style is here.

Before organizing your children’s toys, you must purge the damaged ones, the ones your children have outgrown, and the ones they simply do not play with. Be ruthless and purge the excess so you can more easily store what your kids do play with.

In my freebie library here, I include guides which help walk you through the organizing process and help you decide what to purge and keep. I also include my declutter and organizing challenge calendars and guides to help direct you through each area of your home. These guides ensure you get through every nook and cranny and finally get to the other side of clutter … an organized and functional space!

In this post, we focus on how to properly organize children’s toys. Below, I share ideas on how to organize their toys in a rotating system with different types of organizing solutions that will work for your organizing styles and spaces. (I also share how to organize board games, sports equipment, video games, CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes.)

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Before You Create a Toy Organization System

During our declutter challenge, we already purged the excess toys. If you attempt to organize before you declutter, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. Organized clutter is still clutter. Even if you get every single toy perfectly organized into a labeled container, they won’t stay contained for very long. Once the kids get into one toy container, change their minds, and get into another while not putting the previous one away, and repeat, all the clutter takes over your space again before you know it. A system of perfect micro-organized containment of every single toy your children receive is not realistically maintainable for both parents and children. Well … I love organizing so I would be glad to keep up with any system. However, it’s important to make things maintainable for our children to, one, teach them responsibility, and, two, to take a little bit off of our plates as parents. And, the easiest way to create any organized system is to only organize what you reasonably do use. So, get rid of the excess before you organize.

The Best Toy Rotation System

Okay. So, now that you have purged the excess toys from your home, you will probably end up purging more after this next sorting step. You are going to sort all the toys into the following categories:

After you sort the toys into these categories, select three or four sets of toys from each category per kid. For example, your daughter might have the following:

Now, you are going to designate two areas to store toys. One area will be easily accessible to your children. This can be a play room, play area, or in their bedroom. The other area will not be easily accessible to your children. This can be a closet or any area out of reach to your children. Once you choose these areas, you are going to start with the area that is easily accessible to your children.

Setting Up the Play Room/Area

First, you will place your child’s favorite toys in this area to be easily accessible to them on a daily basis. Then, you are going to select one set of toys from each of the other three categories to place in this area that is easily accessible to your children. For example, you can place these toys in your child’s play area:

Below are some examples of toy organizers that are easily accessible to your children. The most popular system is something like this which is available in different sizes and colors (found here):

If you would like to conceal your children’s toys when not in use, if you utilize a common area like the living room to store toys, for example, you can use a system like this (found here):

To keep things super simple, the classic toy chest might be your preference (found here):

Setting Up the Toy Storage Area

Second, you are going to set up your storage area where you will store the toys that will be rotated into and out of your children’s play area. Select one set of toys from each category to be stored together. For example, you can group these toys together like so:

Then, you simply store these sets of toys out of reach from your children. Every couple weeks, you will remove the toys currently in their toy area. Then, you will select one bin from your storage area to replace the toys in their play area. Finally, you simply take the toys you just removed and store them in the bin you just emptied. So simple!

Below are some examples of storage containers you can easily store in a closet or garage … an area that is not easily accessible for your children but not too difficult for you to get to.

Something like this (found here) can work in a Harry Potter style type storage closet (the containers are modular so they can be configured to fit awkward storage areas):

Two of these can work for storage on the top shelf of a coat closet (found here):

If you must utilize a dustier area, like a garage, for storage, bins like these can be a great solution (found here):

Maintaining this system is super simple. In between rotations, you will purge any toys that become damaged. When your child outgrows a toy, you can set it in a designated area in your home where you contain items to be donated. You can keep a list noting what types of toys have been purged so you know what type to get next. You will prevent yourself from purchasing too many pretend play toys when your child needs more cognitive play toys, for example. And that is how to set up the best toy rotation system to organize your children’s toys!

I hope you found some ideas for how to organize toys for your organizing style and/or the space that you have! In my next post, I share my best tips for how to organize board games. Don’t forget to grab my free resources from my freebie library here. Let’s get to the other side of clutter … an organized and functional space!

Happy Organizing!