Organizing the Toy Corner

We do not have a large house for 6 people. There is a place for everything, but not much space in between. Little ones' toys are the hardest to keep track of, perhaps because they scatter them all through the house. We find them in the bathroom, kitchen, and under pieces of furniture. If you have or have ever had small ones sharing your home, you know what I'm talking about.

A corner of our living room is officially designated for toy storage. I cleared off a few of the lowest shelves of a bookcase, and placed some of the bigger toys on it. Our one year old loves to be able to pull things off and not get into trouble. Right beside the shelf we had a large plastic storage tub. This worked for a while, until a birthday celebration set it to overflowing. Then the little ones were not even touching the toys because they are too little to dump the tub themselves. When I dumped it for them, there were so many they flooded out the living room!

So, today, I exchanged that problem tub with some plastic drawers we had in the girls' room. I put all the toys that wouldn't fit into the large tubs and stashed them under their beds. Now, they still have toys to play with in the living room, but they can easily get to the bottom of each drawer with out dumping. I can also rotate toys from the tubs out to the drawers to keep them occupied. Which is especially important during school time!