It’s the New Year and plenty of us are looking at new ways to organise and tidy our houses. Anyone else been searching Pinterest for playroom storage ideas?! For those of us with young children, toys tend to take up lots of room and are nearly always on show - which can make your shared spaces look cluttered and busy. We’ve put together a few ideas to help you get really intentional about how you store and display your toys this year.
- Have your exit routes sorted! Have one box for things to keep; one for things to sell; one box for things to give away or donate to charity; and a bin bag and a recycling bag for anything broken that can’t be mended. Think in advance which charity shop you’re going to go to or which group/site you’re going to post things on - and when. Think about what's no longer loved or played with; what's broken or has missing pieces; and what's been grown out of?
- Tackle one area at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. For example, if I was starting in our front room, I might choose one kallax storage unit to start with and work through, box by box.
- Consider toy rotation. Think about whether some toys that you’d like to keep might be better stored away somewhere like the loft and then brought out and swapped with other toys periodically. You could rotate toys monthly or seasonally - it can help with overwhelm and mean that your old toys feel fresh and exciting again.
- Weed out duplicates! Do you have toys which do the same or very similar things - do you need to keep them all?
- Think about storage. Everything you are keeping needs to have a place to live and it needs to be easy to access. This will make it so much easier to keep everything organised. We try to keep a ‘1 in, 1 out’ policy but if the soft toy basket is starting to overflow again, you know it’s time to have another sort out!
Above all, try to keep the systems simple and create ones which your children can get involved with. If they are old enough it’s also a great way to practice tidying and looking after your belongings - as well as encouraging kindness and thinking of others when you’re looking for older/unloved toys which could be given away.
I hope these ideas have helped to inspire you to think about how you might re-organise your toys and playspace. Share your best organising idea in the comments!