An ultimate guide to toy storage organization

The idea to write about the ultimate guide for toy storage organization was born out of necessity. I showed you before how we store our toys and the rotation system that we use.

I like to rotate toys every now and then and never have everything out. When toys are waiting for their turn, they are stored in a toy closet in my daughter's bedroom.

But the way we stored toys in the toy closet wasn't ideal. So I did a bit of organizing and completely changed it.

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Steps to toy storage organization:

1. Gather all the toys.

Bring all the toys from everywhere to one room.

Take a laundry basket and walk around the house picking up toys. And I mean ALL of them, even that broken car that always turns up everywhere. And pieces of puzzles that you have no idea the original source of it.

That's probably the most daunting part of the process.

Try to do it while your kids are not around, otherwise, it will become so much more difficult. You can maybe lock inside one room or do it when the kids are not home.

I promise the process will be worth it.

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2. Sort the toys

The next step would be to go through all the toys and separate them into 3 categories: to throw, to donate, to keep.

Throw away all the broken toys, missing parts, everything that can't be fixed.

Whatever doesn't spark joy anymore in your child, you can either donate or sell. I'm looking at you, noisy activity cube that plays on my nerve every time someone touches it!

To be fair, I got rid of almost all of the singing toys a while ago and only left one activity cube with buttons. I'm trying to get rid of it but somehow it always comes back haha

=The next pile (and I bet it's still big) is to keep.

3. Categorize the toys

While the first two categories are relatively easy to do, the last one "to keep" will take some time to organize. We need to tackle this pile as well. Bare with me, the end is almost near. This is the most fun part of the process - to separate toys that you keep in categories.

Categories could be different for everyone. For us it was by skills: we've got

logical games
math
sorting
puzzles (separate category since we have so many)
animals (divided into the farm, wild, sea animals, and dinosaurs)
baby and toddler toys (things that my 1yo doesn't need anymore but still could serve me in the future)

Whatever works for you, make it happen. If you have tons of cars, make it a separate category, or art supplies (I'd recommend keeping them separately from the mix. I keep most of our art supplies in my craft room/office).

4. Storage

As much as I'd prefer to have a more eco-friendly solution, I love clear plastic containers. If you think about it, I invested once and I'm going to use those containers forever, so maybe it's not a bad eco solution. I got these Hefty containers from Loew's. They are a bit pricey but I got them on sale, and I also used Rakuten (former Ebates) when they had %15 cashback. If you don't use Rakuten yet, you need to jump on it right now! Registration is for FREE but you get cashback while shopping online. Follow this link to register today!

The reason behind plastic containers is obvious - I like to see what's inside the container to be able to get it quickly.

Whatever works for you, you can keep toys even in card boxes, that could be nicely decorated if you want to.

Find a place where you will store containers. Since we don't have a dedicated playroom, we keep it in my oldest daughter's closet. It didn't have a hook before but I changed my mind fairly quickly after someone (eye roll) got to the closet without me. The way I store containers is not ideal since while they are stuck on top of each other, it's more difficult to get to ones on the bottom. Ideally, you'd have each container standing separately.

These are my few tips on how to organize your kid's toys. It takes some time but it so well worth it. It's one of those things that you need to do once and then just need to maintain it. This system works for us. Let me know what's your tips and tricks to store neverending children's toys.