Organizing the Toys

Now that Christmas has come and gone my new task to to corral all the chaos. Typiclly in years past I have it done within a day or 2 of Christmas...this year however has been particularly challenging. It seems that A) our child receives WAY too many gifts B) his toys are quite large and hard to store C) We are crazy for letting it get to this point.

I have been hard at work though - our first chore (before Christmas) was to find a new home for his train table. Because we made it ourselves it was larger than your standard train table - in fact, it was 3'x6' and took up a HUGE footprint in our house. We had to move it or there would have been no room for Christmas this year. I spent a lot of time thinking and researching (ie scanning Pinterest) before we made our final choice. My inital thought was to build the table into a trundle but my son has a very small room (10x10) and giving up that amount of floor space so it could slide out would have taken the whole room. I realized that DUH if the table would fit under the bed then why not put it on the bottom of a bunk bed. So we did!

This is a standard bunk bed with slats across the bottom. You see his train table sit perfectly on the slats. We added and under the cabinet light below the top bunk to light the train table. There are plastic drawers in varying sizes (from Wal-Mart) under the bed and labeled to help him find AND put away his toys.

 

This is the opposite side of the bed. There are more storage drawers and some over-sized trucks that don't fit into the "garage". 

When you walk into his room you are bombarded greeted with a selection of toys and books. Again each clear plastic bin is labeled with a photo for ease of returning toys to their homes.  

(Eventually we will paint and put up curtains) 

Since we made these changes to his room he plays in here for hours at a time and he is proud to put his things away so he has a "fresh space" to play in the next day.

Here is the "garage" where all of his big trucks live. I love this - he can easily access any of his toys and easily return them to their home. It also serves as a barrier - when get gets a new truck that won't fit here then it's time to donate an older truck. This keeps me from have 2 "garages". *wink* That covers his bedroom. Now we had to organize the playroom/family room space.

Another hurdle is these Lego vehicles. He does play with them and dumping them into containers = broken vehicles that have to always be fixed. I am using this small closet shelf for right now but will be getting an Ikea Lack coffee table this weekend. It houses a large shelf underneath - PERFECT place for all of my his lego vehicles to park when not in use. Then he can also use the table top for play. Win/Win if you ask me.

This is a corner in the playroom/family. More buckets (from Dollar Tree) and I love these! They are large, stout, colorful AND were only $1 each!  I still have more organizing to get done - once my trip to Ikea has come and gone. I will update with the 2nd phase after that's all put together.