Monday, February 17, 2014

The toy invasion

Im not sure about other mums but I often feel that when I gave birth to my first child my house gave birth to a toy factory. And this toy factory has the never ending pack of TimTams magic going on because it doesn't matter how often I do a clean out and secretly sneak out the no longer played with toys their number just doesn't decrease. It makes keeping the toy room, along with the rest of the house, clean rather hard to accomplish.

Two years ago we bought a set of the popular cube shelves from Masters.



It certainly helped to organise the toys in the beginning and then to keep it easy to tidy each day so I highly recommend investing in a similar system.


It's not that simple though, as much as I'd love those nine cubes to be the extent of my children's toy factory, there's loads more.

We also have a soft toy bucket that's overflowing, and a toy box for the big chunky toys. A kitchen where the play food 'should' be kept and a garage for the cars. Oh and then there is the dolls house the husband built for Christmas...it's too big to leave the lounge room but it's home to the action figures, doll house furniture and the little family. Then there is the outside toys. Like I said it's never ending.

I've found some images that may help inspire you in your quest to organise your own toy factory.

My favourite is this bucket invention.



It's simply plastic buckets bought from any of your red dots, Reject shops or even Bunnings, with holes punched in the sides with an ice pick, screw driver or drill then connected by zip ties. I love it.

Here are a few more...



I love the idea of this for older children mine are still under five so not sure it would work. For older kids who build scenes and like to continue playing with them time after time this would work well. It allows for the room to be tidied but their creations can stay together.



I definitely could use this outside. We manage just as much 'stuff' outside as we do in and I loathe seeing a messy yard so this would work well for us.



If you have more room to spare a larger storage system with more options could work better for you than the cube shelves. Place a picture as well as the name of each item in the front and it will help young kids learn where everything goes.
What I love most about the above option is that they have a box labelled 'misc'. We also have a miscellaneous box, it's the one that's cleaned out most often yet reproduces faster than rabbits.
This was found at Hepworth, a blog from a mum raising a bunch of boys.



Another favourite is the zoo for stuffed animals. It's cute while serving a purpose unlike my overflowing soft toy box I don't imagine any animals will be escaping from that storage solution.

I think I'll be spending today turning an old unused book shelf into a toy zoo, wish me luck for no stampedes.

Skye

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the awesome tips! Love the buckets too but I dont think we have room for that sort of thing. I am planning on investing in some underbed storage containers for the kids rooms :)

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    1. The buckets do look as if they'd fill a room on their own don't they? :)
      I've seen some great under bed storage created from old drawers. Just add a coat of paint and some wheels and you're done :)

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