Tackle That Tough Spot - Toys

I am beginning to wonder about this Tackle That Tough Spot series that I am doing. I am an anonymous blogger, yet I am showing the world my mess.

Toys. If you are a parent of young children, I probably don't have to say much more. They seem to multiply like bunnies. With the holidays and my oldest daughter's birthday recently, we have acquired even more toys.

We don't have one specific toy room, so we keep toys in a couple of different areas throughout the house. Our girls share a bedroom that is small and there isn't alot of room for toys, so most of their toys are in the family room and our basement.

This first picture was taken at the end of the day in the corner in our family room where we have a great shelving unit, but it is in total disarray. To be fair to my kids, this photo was taken at the end of the day, before they cleaned up. But cleaning up was usually piling the toys, because we have run out of room to store them.

This book shelf in our living room is for family pictures and knick knacks that my kids like to rearrange. Currently I keep photo albums in the shelves on the bottom and I think that is a space that I need to re-purpose. I can use that space a lot more efficiently for other things, like toys.

This next photo is in our basement. Can you tell I only have girls?

And so I tackled...

I went around the house and pulled together all of their books. I kept a few upstairs, but most of them were placed where they should be - in the book shelf. The baskets in the unit are for smaller toys, dolls, doll clothes, etc.

In the basement, I collected all of their kitchen and doll house toys and put them in bins under the table. I also set up the train set around the doll house.

I moved all of the family games, the kids' games and puzzles to the book shelves in the living room. Every thing is easily accessible for both the kids and we have definitely been playing more games since we have pulled them all together.

I used this big bin to hold my toddler's toys. Her toys seem to be bigger and bulkier. I keep the bin in the garage and pull it out every couple of days or so. They seem to hold her attention more if she doesn't see them every day.

Things to consider:

• I separated the toys by category. I found doll house toys all over our house and they are now all pulled together in the basement. The same with puzzles and games; they are contained in the living room. Kitchen toys, train set, instruments and books all have a new home.


• Rotate toys. Like I said above, I am keeping a bin of toys in the garage that I'll bring out every few days. After a few days of not seeing them, the toys seem to hold the kids' attention longer.


• At the end of the day, everything goes back home. My oldest likes to sing, "Clean up, Clean up, Everybody Do Their Share". The problem wasn't the kids not cleaning up after themselves, although they do have to be told, but they are only 4 and 20 months. The problem was lack of space to manage the toys. We were running out of space. Honestly, we were acquiring too many toys too.


• The best thing about organizing and straightening up the toys...the donation box that I now have with toys the kids have both outgrown.

What tough spot did you tackle this week?

Check out the previous Tackle That Tough Spot Post:

• Garage/Mud Room/Pantry Area

Stay tuned for my next Tackle That Tough Spot post. I will be tackling my home office and I'm probably going to need longer than a week to tackle that one, so I can't promise that I'll have it done by next week...yikes!!

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This post is linked to:

• The Finer Things in Life