Organizing and Storage Issues

HI mom listen I really don't know what to tell you it looks like you have done it all. Well what I did want to say is my daughter move out and I still have her stuff animals this is crazy and every time I told her i will throw them away she say she is coming to get them and don't, she has been gone 1 1/2 now and she is 24 about to be 25 in Jan.7 yes she is my baby but she is a hot mess. lol good luck

C.,

You didn't mention if your house has a basement or an attic or what types of closets. I live in a 1925 Chic & our bedrooms are all about 9' x 9'. My son has a room, my husband & I have a room, and our third bedroom is a home office plus my husband's dressers & my dresser are in that room since we can not fit any furniture in our bedroom besides a queen size bed & end tables! We don't even have a linen closet or a coat closet, so I have been very creative with storage. For example, our bed is a steel frame platform bed that has about 15 inches clearance below. Plastic drawer type bins under the foot of the bed hold the household linens. Cube shelves in my pantry hold the kitchen towels. Baskets on top of the microwave oven hold dishtowels and pot holders.

My son has a very tall armoire in his room & his closet has been fitted with Elfa shelving (less expensive Rubbermaid or Closetmaid stuff would not work b/c 1925 closets are nowhere near a standard size by today's standards) where I store some toys in bins. In our living room, I have an espresso colored 8 cube shelf by Closetmaid (bought on sale at Target.) All the toys in our living room live in those bins. There are a couple of slightly larger toys in the corner of our dining room. It's not always pretty during the day, but it cleans up fairly neatly. For more room, and to keep our son out of the buffet drawers & cabinets, we push the dining room table over.

Our basement is not finished or heated, but it seems to be maintaining 68 degrees or so. I am clearing out space for when we are desperate if it is rainy or bad weather or just so my son can be down there while I do laundry. Even if we don't spend time playing down there, I am planning to keep a number of his toys on a shelf down there. We can then rotate the out upstairs as the more stuff we have out, the crazier it seems to get. I don't mind that his stuff is all over sometimes, but when I am stepping on or tripping over stuff, it really becomes a problem! Also, I find that the more he has out & pulls out, the more chaotic it is. He is still pretty small, so I would like him to be able to keep the chaos to a minimum so it's easy for him (us) to find toys to play with & then also easier to teach him to clean up his toys. We also have an enclosed, but unheated sun porch that I used in the summer for a play area. It's already too cold, but before I cleaned out the basement & made it as safe as I could, I was thinking that we could always keep larger toys out there & bring them in to play with & return them there when we were done. I suppose if you can not find any storage space at home & can't get rid of stuff, maybe there's a relative nearby (like grandma?) who would allow you to keep toys at their house & trade them out once in awhile. If you do get rid of stuff, you can always check out "toy libraries." Our public library has a toy closet with toys that can be checked out. I hear there are actual independent toy libraries as well.

As for stuffed animals....I hope that people stop giving them to my son. We are overrun with them & he's only 18 mos. old!!!! Most of them "live" up high on the armoire in his room & are more like decoration.

Good luck!

What about one of those "nets" for stuffed animals in the corner of your daughter's bedroom? Ikea has nice kid friendly bins that slide into shelves and you can customize them as needed in your daughter's room.

I would suggest a big de-clutter event where you get rid of everything she doesn't play with. You could donate to Goodwill or freecycle the toys. The best option is always to get rid of it!

I always think "up" when storage becomes a problem. I have closet organizers in the closets that make the most of vertical space. For stuffed animals, books, trophys etc., it's cute to get high shelves that go around the top of the room. The issue is dust, you have to take the stuffed animals down periodically and vacuum them off. Also, storing stuff under the bed helps.

I've come to the realization that having a lot of toys is not good for kids. They get overwhelmed and the rooms get messy when there isn't a nice place for each thing. My daughter plays with her Barbies and her Littlest Pet Shops and that's it! She has a closet full of toys she doesn't even touch. So that reminds me...I should go in and help her purge as well!

Donate the toys she no longer plays with to a daycare or womens shelter. They have these plastic chains with clips on them for stuffed annimals so they can hang on the chain and free up space in the toy chest. Then remember she doesn't have to have every toy in the store and limit what you buy. We as parents think we have to get them everything they ask for or what we didn't get to have when we were children. Especially when they are the only child. Stop the madness. How many toys can she play with at once. She will not feel deprived if she doesn't have every toy in Toys R Us at her house.

Hi C.,
I live in a 2 bdr. condo and have 3 little kids and I can say that I have no problem with space. I have no toys in the living room. I have decided a while ago that it was just too much everywhere.
The older kids share a room, they have bunk beds and all their toys are in their room, organized in toy bins stored in the closet and under their bed. I only keep what fits in their room. There is a doll house, Diego house on the floor, but all the other toys are in bins or their own boxes they came in. I had a small toddler table for drawing in my kitchen, but recently got rid of it because I had to bring out the high chair for the baby. Also in their closet I have a dresser with 3 drawers for each kid. All the other clothes that don't fit yet are stored up high in plastic bins. I got rid of a play kitchen recently because we bought a keyboard for them to learn to play music, so the keyboard came and the play kitchen went.
We only allow one or two toys for their birthdays and for christmas, and again, if it gets crowded I get rid of stuff. I let them pick out what can go....
All their bikes tricycles and other items are in the garage.

Sign up for freecycle at myfreecycle.org and you can give stuff away there. (you can also get some free stuff that you might need - like storage stuff).

I also started selling sfuff I don't need on Ebay, good way to get rid of stuff that's just taking up space and make a few $$$ at the same time. You would be surprised what people buy and how much they pay for it sometimes...

Good luck

You have gotten some great ideas so far! I may use some of them myself as I have 3 kids , 6 and under, in a 2 BR condo. We are trying to sell....but that is a whole other story. Anyway....I have informed our family that until further notice we would appreciate it if they want to give gifts that are on the larger side, that they clear it through us first. Also, I have asked that stuffed toys be only given to the baby (My MIL gives a beenie baby whenever possible. Again...a whole other story.) With the holidays approaching, you way want to consider asking Merideth to help pick out some toys to donate to kids that may not be as luck as she is. If you have a bit of room somewhere out of sight you could load up a box or two and hide them. Then this winter when you can't get out too often because it is -25, take that box out and hide different toys away. Sometimes it makes the old seem new again. Hope this helps.

I've spent my whole life with insufficient space....i am the eldest of 7 and we lived in a 5 room house!....this set the tone for me. My husband and I raised 4 kids in a 5 room place also....not that we didn't want more space, but we couldn't afford anything bigger. My mother's answer was to set space aside in the living for our "big toys" (doll beds, strollers, etc) behind the sofa. It placed the sofa away from the wall about 3 feet. It gave us our own "house" to play in and hid our toys from direct view when kid time was over. My husband and I built a 2 ft deep by 8 ft long closet at one end of our dining room. this allowed our daughter's kitchen (she had 4 pieces...) and doll bed to sit on the floor with shelves up higher for things like games, puzzles and blocks that both she and the boys played with. I would pull the high toys down and place the baskets holding them back up when it was clean up time. by closing the doors, there was no thought to the dining room doubling as a playroom during the day. Our dining room table was frequently a fort, the table chairs would get pushed to the side and there was plenty of crawl around on the floor space.
I used plastic drawer and baskets to sort the various types of toys but there was NEVER a shortage...in fact this worked so well, that even now that my kids are too big for the toys, I still have 2 of the plasic drawer units filled with toys on the floor in my coat closet for when I have little visitors...they love it.

Hi C.! Sounds like you need a lot of help. I know of this great organizer, her name is Riv Lynch who owns a company that can help you with exactly your problem, organizing. She knows what it is like to organize children's toys in adult areas. She has small children. Here is her company's information,

Sacred Spaces
A professional organizing company specializing in residential and home-based businesses.
Riv Lynch
www.sacredspaceshome.com

Good Luck!

I used to do daycare and have thesame problems. I t havea very small house. I agree with your other moms. Shelves in the cosetare GREAT. I have themin all my closet you can mae bins of toys ,etc and keep them on the shelves.sfor the lviing room the big things there's not much you can do with but as far as little stuff goes. I have seen these wicker drawers with 3-5 drawers that look like apiece of furniture that you cuold put toys in the drawers and it won;t look messy and will look more like furniture. I would check out ALDI (as I have seen them there in the past) maybe IKEA, and target. They are very reasonaable. I also thought of wooden shelves. The same thing I would put in my closets to organize (they have them in all size) and then fill them with clear plastice bins. You can get them at wallmart for a $1.00. Then all you have to do is pull out the bin with thetoys she wants to ply with and put it back before she opens another one. You can then use the top of he cabinet for decorations, books, etc. It t looks like furniture and is a very neat way to organize. Good Luck. You may even think about packing up the things she does not play within plastic bins and put them on a high shelve fo a later date. Then when you take it back down she will be excited to see them again. Like a new toy.

If you think she will not want to give anything up, then send her to grandma's house for the day. Then pack up and give away or donate EVERYTHING she is not playing with regularly that you do not want to keep. Be really strict- I mean EVERYTHING she isn't using unless you want to keep it for sentimental reasons.

When your daughter is old enough to understand that there is just no reason to keep things she doesn't play with anymore, have her help you go through her things and choose which stuffed animals to donate to some little kids who don't have any toys. My son always did this and he really got it and after a while didn't mind giving away animals he never really played with anyway.

I was a mom of a toddler in an apartment and the only way to keep sane was to donate stuff and get rid of it. I used to BEG my ex's family not to bring my son tons of crappy plastic toys and beanie babies, etc. They all got tossed in the recycling or donated to the local women and children's shelter. Anything that does not fit in her room- do you really need it??

Keep the living room as a family space, but one where grown ups can relax too! Do not let kid-stuff take over your whole house- it will just grow and grow and make you crazy. Get some plastic storage bins in various sizes and label them. Teach your daughter to pick up after herself and keep the bins stacked in her room or a closet. If you start keeping it this way now, it will be easier when your daughter is older. Good Luck!!

One step ahead has some "hanging" organizers for stuffed animals. Might getting something like that for her room help?

We are fortunate that we have a family room with an amazing closet in our basement. If you don't already have good organizers in your closets, I'd suggest spending the money on some. The one in my daughter's room has a shelf that is super high that I can store tons of stuff on. The more you can store in closets, the more space you can have on the floor. I'm in the process of moving my daughter into a new room and I am not going to be getting her a dresser. I want very little furniture, so that way her big toys can just hang out without causing clutter.

Right now, though, my living room is a giant playroom and it's driving me crazy! But like I said, my plan is to use closets to the max. I bought some small plastic toy bins yesterday that had wheels, they fit in the bottom of the closet great! So better utilization of my closet space is my plan.