Toy Storage

So let’s talk about my least favorite thing to figure out……where to put all the toys!!! Does anyone else struggle with this?! I swear it’s like toys grow out of the floor at night! Where do they all come from?! Grandparents! Grandparents is the answer 99.9% of the time. If y’all have grandparents like ours then they buy each kid a toy or 2, or 10 every single time they visit. Which, when you have 3 kids, equals to about 456,723 toys a year!

Ok I’m being a bit dramatic but really, we are drowning in toys. And before you say donate, we do, twice a year I promise! My kids will forever be scarred by the fact that I give their toys away twice a year! I’m not even joking one of them brings it up daily. “Hey Mom remember when you gave away my favorite Doc McStuffins mobile clinic?” Oh by favorite do you mean the one you played with twice, broke into 3 pieces and stuck in the closet for 6 months?

I have literally tried every single storage idea and Pinterest idea ever created. I’ve tried closet bins, I’ve tried under the bed bins, I’ve tried sorting the toys into their own individual bins. Y’all I even had them organized down to Barbie shoes in a Tupperware container last year! None of these things worked! When told to pick up, everything got shoved into one bin.

So walking through Old Time Pottery recently and staring and all of their millions of storage options it dawned on me. Let’s make this easy! Let’s make this easy to clean up so that it isn’t such a huge task for them. Instead of making them separate all of their toys into 20 different containers we are going to simplify this!

So here’s my idea for all of the new moms and the moms struggling like me that have tried everything. Buy a few large bins! I bought 3 large bins with lids that stay attached so we aren’t searching for lids and voila problem solved. We threw all of the baby doll supplies in one, all of the Barbie stuff in one, etc. Normally I would’ve separated clothes into a bin, bottles into a bin, diapers into a bin. But nope, not gonna do it! Instead all of the baby doll supplies went into one giant bin. That way when they are finished they can literally scoop up all of the stuff and dump it in.

This is working guys! My kids are cleaning up their own messes because it is so much easier now!! Get in your car, drive to Old Time Pottery and choose from their endless storage options and I promise you will thank me!!

It never even occurred to me until now that I was making this way too complicated for these little people to handle. I thought I was helping them by over-organizing but in fact it was doing the total opposite and making them dread cleaning up.

Now their room is staying clean and organized. I even chose bins that are brown and off white so dirty little finger prints wouldn’t show. So much simpler! I guess sometimes we overthink thinks when the answer all along was just to make it easy! Their short attention span can handle scooping up all of the things and dumping them into their home in just a few minutes.

Now that I’ve solved the world’s biggest problem I can go sit and relax with a cup of coffee! You’re welcome! Totally kidding of course, well kind of!

~Becca

@rebeccaannehome

*The bins and those beautiful prints are all from Old Time Pottery.