Toy Storage Version 5.0

Ah the never ending task of toy organization. For the first 4 years of Fred's life we didn't have a dedicated play room. He had a few toys in his bedroom, but for the most part they were in our family room. I've overhauled it 4 times by changing the shelving and the baskets/bins/containers. Things wouldn't fit right in the containers/shelves or a birthday or Christmas would come along and despite purging old toys, we'd outgrow the storage. Even after we finished the playroom upstairs I didn't move it all upstairs because I felt like I was banishing them from the main area of the house. Plus, if they had a TV show they wanted to watch, they had to do that in the family room because I had always said I would never put a TV in their playroom or bedrooms since all the smart people (AAP, parent's magazines, websites, blogs etc.) said not to. So for the next 2.5 years we lived with a few toys here, a few there, a few everywhere! I began to feel like my house was being taken over. I had no where to call my own space and I never got to watch anything I wanted to watch on TV. Fast forward to the day I snapped, er, the light bulb came on over my head. We never had all our crap strewn about the house when I was a kid! We had toys in our rooms and in a playroom in the basement. Hell, we had whole rooms of the house we weren't even allowed to enter unless it was a special occasion. What the fuck was my problem??? They have a PLAYROOM! Put all their shit in it already! So began Toy Storage version 5.0. Step one: decide that unless one of those child raising "experts" lived in this house, I was putting a TV upstairs. Screw it. I don't care what ya' all think. Step two: decide once and for all on a storage system that fit the space and was definitive. I narrowed it down to this

 or this 

Just kidding :) Even if I could afford these rooms, my kids would destroy them and I'd be pissed that they "played" in the playroom. Moving on.......

I took my time exploring different ideas. Pinterest wasn't invented the last time I did this, God bless Pintereset. I found this idea for buckets from the Dollar Tree which is waaaaayyy more my speed financially.

I liked it but wasn't sure it was exactly what I wanted to do. But it was a place to start. I wanted to reuse the stuff we had that was working which was pretty much just the wire cube shelves I got at Target during toy storage version 2.0. Once I got to Dollar Tree I decided this wasn't going to work. The buckets aren't very big, but zip-tied together they would make one really big bucket pyramid that my kids would have no trouble tipping forward and dumping everything out. Have no fear, there was amass of other splendid options in my favorite wonderland of dollar treasures.





And here's what I did with them

                                                                                              

I used the zip ties to attach pictures of each container and their contents. It may sound anal to have things in specific buckets but I have found it's much easier to keep track of the toys and all the pieces and easily see what's missing. Once you experience the world ending for a toddler that can't find Woody's hat, you will understand.






So I'm happy with it for now. Oh, and there's my bad mommy moment TV that I have no intention of feeling guilty about :)