For the longest time, Jay’s toys had been giving me anxiety! Everywhere I walk, in every single room there was at least one of his toys scattered around. He had a basket in his room with some of his favourite toys (mainly little cars & dinosaurs), there was a huge felt storage house inside his closet with a huge amount of toys which have accumulated throughout his 2 years of life and then there was a huge wicker basket in the lounge room filled with EVEN MORE TOYS!
It was honestly starting to get out of hand! The toys in the lounge room would always end up under the couches (therefore doubling my cleaning time!) & the toys in his room were just so unorganised, it was a plain mess!
I decided to turn to good old trustee Instagram to ask for some advice! I was so shocked at the amount of other mamas who were also suffering from ‘toy clutter’ because let’s be real here, do kids even know how to play with toys nowadays? I feel like they just throw things around and walk out of the room like they didn’t nothing!
Anywho, back to the organising! Thanks to so many great tips and suggestions of fantastic toy organisation systems I finally settled on the ‘Trofast’ organisation units & tubs from IKEA! Let me just start by saying… THANK GOD! This system has been a life saver! His toys are now all organised, each toy has a ‘HOME’ & everything is categorically packed.
I then had the lovely @h_crafty_creations on Instagram create some labels for the tubs & they were done! However, let’s rewind a little. Before I went out to purchase the units & tubs I had to make sure I knew exactly how many of each item I needed depending on the toys and categories etc.
So here is how it all went down:
1. Gather every single toy around the house and place them in one area
2. Begin placing each toy into categories eg; balls, cars, animals, figurines, trucks, dolls, dress-ups, kitchen, educational etc etc… while you’re doing this if you come across a toys which your child no longer fancies, is broken or you simply just cannot stand that irritating sound it makes put it in the ‘donate’ pile.
3. Once you have all the toys placed in piles of categories take a picture of the lot of them. This will help you determine how many of each size tub to get once you head to IKEA
4. Head to IKEA and figure out how many units you’ll need plus how many tubs of each size. Here is what I went for:
You may need more or less of certain sizes depending on the size of your categorised piles of toys. Take a look at your picture that you took after you organised the toys in categories and calculate how many of each size tub you’ll need. For eg: you may have a lot of trucks so you’ll need the $9 tub, you may only have a few small bouncy balls which will fit in the $4 tub.
5. (Optional) Once you’ve set up your units and tubs at home you’ll need to figure out which labels you’ll need and place your order! You may even prefer to print out some pictures of the content of each tub to make it easier for your child to know what’s in each one or even for easy ‘packing away’. Eg: stick a picture of a Car on the car tub, a picture of a dolly on the dolly tub etc..
I really hope this blogpost helped to organise the toys in your home & keep your anxiety levels at bay!
Love,
