My children Keelyn and William were very lucky this Christmas and received many new toys. No duplicates and things that they both are genuinely interested in a lot of cross over things that they can enjoy together. We are appreciative towards our family and friends. It was quite a large pile of gifts though but that’s what happens when you have large families. I decided to deal with organizing and putting away the toys right away. It’s one of those tasks that the longer you leave it the more tedious the job seems to be. It also helps that I was consistently motivated by two little ones that kept requesting I “open it, open it!”
The kids have their own playroom space on the second floor just outside of Wililam’s room it is not a large space but we are very grateful for it. It’s painted a nice bright kid friendly green (not like the yellow you see in the photo). The organization is simple. Ikea shelves with bins, a small shelf which sections off the “house centre” as my kids say. And a low Ikea table that actually a TV stand but we use it as a building/puzzle table because the kids can sit on it, in front of it and there’s a shelf where we store puzzles under. Sometimes this table even acts as a stage! I organized the dress up clothes on the large shelf. My husband removed one of the “cubes” and then I used the 3M sticky hooks so that clothes could be hung. We also have a chest and bin of accessories.
Looking in the playroom. It is NOT this yellow!
I LOVE how the dress up clothes hang
Anyway the space is pretty simple and well organized so fitting in a pile of new things was going to be tricky. I also know from my Kindergarten teaching experience that the key to keeping kids engaged with toys is to swap them out every so often. And less is more! I’m sure you’ve had to manage the play space once every toy had been dumped not fun. I try to swap toys the first Saturday of the month but that hasn’t been happening lately so I needed a system. I went to the dollar store and purchased a ton of bins and baskets all toys were then opened up and placed inside a basket or a bin with a lid. Some bins went on playroom shelves, some on a shelf we have downstairs in our family room and the rest inside the playroom closet (yes our playroom has a closet it’s amazing). This way when it’s toy swapping day it’s literally a matter of pulling out new bins and rotating between the two spaces. It also makes tidy up really easy especially since Keelyn and William are use to Kindergarten and Daycare toys being organized in this manner. My next step is to make labels for each bin which will make tidy up time really easy!
The closet games on the top so William can’t reach them down 🙂
Just for fun our playroom rules! Wall Decal ordered from ETSY from seller LucyLews
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1B4E - Shivonne Lewis-Young 