Organizing Kid's Stuff

My sister in law is pregnant with her second and starting to feel the urge to get some of the kids cluttered chaos in control and organize before the second baby arrives... a feeling I've become a little bit familiar with!  She asked me to share with her some pictures of how I organize Jace's things... so I figured the best way was to just post a blog.  Regardless of how much or how little you buy for your child, it seems that stuff just accumulates so fast, every birthday and Christmas that pass it becomes harder and harder to keep the "stuff" under control.  I think that kids can never have enough creative play type items, to promote imagination and learning in the traditional sense... I see Jace learning much more from independantly playing than he does from actual structured learning time.  The only problem was before I organized his things, he wasn't really utilizing anything and instead was just overstimulated by it all and would ask to watch TV instead.  That, combined with the idea of pulling out all of the baby items again caused me to want to find a more structured way to store all of his (and the baby's) things.

I'm a huge fan of organizing bins from the Dollar Tree.  I hate the idea of having to actually spend alot of money to get things organized, which is why it's great to stop into the Dollar Tree and be able to pick up several different types of bins for $1.  They change stock frequently and the majority of our organizational stuff in the house comes from there.  (Sorry in advance that all of these were quick camera phone pictures, and not good quality)


Playroom Organizing-

The main storage in our playroom comes from an 8-cube shelf (Cubesicals from Target).  I only purchased 4 cloth drawers up front because they are $6.99 a piece and suddenly they were more expensive than the shelf itself.  At some point, once the baby is older and actually playing in the playroom I will add more, but for now the laundry basket style baskets are from the Dollar Tree for $1 a piece.  The drawers are organized Top L-R: Mr Potato Heads, Shake n Go Cars, Cars/Trucks/Airplanes, and Wooden Building Train.  Bottom L-R: Lincoln Logs, Plush toys, play food, and balls.  To the right of the shelf we also have an oversized plastic tub (from Kohl's, was about $7 on clearance but I used a coupon to get it for free.) for holding bigger toys like his firetruck, treasure chest, and other make believe or dress up type toys.  On top of the shelf we keep random board books at easy access between homemade bookends.  There are also 3 small $1 buckets from Target that hold easy access play-doh, flash cards, and pretend bugs.

 



 

 



It seems almost every little boy (or girl!) LOVES a train table.  They are great for various activities besides just building train tracks... the only problem is they're HUGE and take up a ton of space.  I decided to use that space for storage and purchased 6 $1 buckets from the Dollar Tree that slide underneath perfectly, 3 on one side, 3 on the other.  They're easy for Jace to pull out and slide back in when he's done.  We keep his plastic train tracks, wooden train tracks, train accessories, action figures, etc stored in these buckets.

We also keep a similar green bucket under the tool bench for extra tool storage, and a green basket for our current favorite books right next to the reading chair.  (Both from DT for $1)  The black ottoman next to the chair was a cheap Target find but perfect for storing more random toys in and doubling as a side table. 

Jace's art table is somewhere he loves to sit and play quietly by himself.  We keep several coloring, activity, and sticker books in the file folder on the wall.  (Found at Target for about $2-3 and painted).  We also store colored pencils, window markers and pipe cleaners in paint buckets on the table.  (Covered with scrapbook paper and "ART" letters.)  We also keep a box of crayons tucked into the file folder.  It's great to not have to pull coloring books out for Jace every time he wants to color... which is often.  :)

 

 

The reading nook area also has storage, mainly from the $4 thrift store dresser that I painted that keeps more learning supplies in the shallow top drawer, musical instruments in the second drawer, and wooden puzzles in the bottom two drawers.  Jace's felt board is stored on the wall at his height, although sometimes it comes off the wall for play time.  The rain gutter bookshelves I built are also great for book storage that takes up minimal space.  Oh, and of course the playroom wouldn't be complete without a gigantic storage bin full of dinosaurs.  I found this oversized bin (it's HUGE) at the thrift store for 99 cents.

Around the house kid's organizing-

Since the kitchen is right off of the playroom we store Jace's play kitchen right inside the doorway so he can pretend cook while we cook.  We also have a big ugly gray side to our fridge sitting right at the edge of the kitchen, outside the playroom, so we use that to hold an alphabet chart, dinosaur magnets, and a Leapfrog Phonics Farm toy (best learning toy ever!).  It's nice to have that all at his height... even if it's not exactly the most eye appealing.  I'd rather have a lived in and loved home anyways. :)

We are currently working on finishing organizing the closet off of our living room.  It holds big toys like car ramps, hockey nets, baby gear, etc.  We also have Jace's craft supplies hanging up inside in a clear double sided shoe holder, and his DVDs on a wire rack.  This closet still needs some work, so we're going to install another shelving unit in there soon hopefully.

 

 

 Instead of a coffee table in the living room, we use a trunk chest... it's perfect for extra toy storage.  We have two stackable blue baskets in here (from Target), and a large car track. 

In the kitchen we use Dollar Tree bins to help store some of Jace's dishes.  The top shelf has the magic bullet that we make his morning smoothies with (along with all the parts in the basket) and his lunch box for school.  The shelf below has his plastic plates, bowls, favorite to-go cups, and a plastic bin that holds all his snack sized bowls, popsicle makers, lunchbox accessories, dinosaur sandwich cutter, plastic cups, etc.  Before I added these baskets everything used to fall out on me all the time, it's definitely easier to just pull out the bins when I need something.

 

 

Jace rotates between his own bathroom and ours when he takes a bath, so instead of dragging things back and forth or having duplicates, I finally got one of these caddys from the DT that holds Jace's soap, washclothes, bath toys, extra toothbrush/paste, lotion, etc.

 



 

In the garage we have some toy storage in the midst of all the shelves full of tools, crafts, and gardening stuff.  We have a white shelf out there that has some blue bins (from DT $1) that hold: water table toys, bubbles, stroller accessories, sports equiptment, inflatable pool and slip n slide, and sand toys.

 

 

Kid's bedroom organizing-

 

Jace has a large 9-cube shelf in his bedroom that I found second hand for $20 when he was a baby.  It's much larger that the typical cube shelves, which is a bit hard to tell in pictures.  I found the oversized bins on the bottom shelves from Bed Bath and Beyond a long time ago.  They hold favorite stuffed animals, and oversized toys.  The middle shelves hold books.  On the top shelves there are more $1 bins from the Dollar Tree... like I said these are actually much bigger than they look.  We have several of this style bins all over the house.  They hold wooden blocks, lego duplos and lego trains, and build-your-own dino pieces.  These are great because of their size and handles Jace can easily take them down and bring them wherever he wants to play.



Jace's closet isn't ideal since it only has one shelf for clothes.  With kid's clothes I always think it makes more sense to have double shelves since their clothing is so small... but since this is a rental we won't be bothering adding on.  We have a rubbermaid tub ($4 walmart) full of Little People toys in the corner of the closet and an Ikea hamper full of stuffed animals next to it.  On the top shelf in the far corner is a large tub full of board books that Jace has mostly grown out of.  There are also 3 plastic Sam's Club animal cracker containers (that I took from work) that hold megablocks and playdoh/cookie cutters.  Then there are 3 blue bins (from DT $1) that hold lesser used clothing like: dress suits/ties, costumes, and I keep one bin empty so that whenever I find something that's too small on Jace I can throw it in there.  Once it's full I put it into it's appropriate bin in the storage room... rather than doing that everytime he outgrows something. On the opposite side we keep games and puzzles.

 

Jace also has a large dresser in the closet.  The drawers are organized from top to bottom: 1) underwear, socks, hats, mittens (in seperate cubes).  2) t-shirts and cut offs  3) pants and shorts 4) "comfy pants", swimwear, pj sets, and pj pants 5) books Jace hasn't grown into yet, along with baby books/albums.

 

 

 

Baby organizing (in progress) -

 

The baby doesn't have his own room yet, as he will be staying in our bedroom for the first several months on the main floor.  We had very limited space to work with, but used a small section of our closet to make into the "baby zone".  The baskets on the top shelf are from the Dollar Tree and hold baby socks, cloth diaper inserts, hooded towels, and receiving blankets.  The top shelf of clothing is all outfit style bodysuits, sorted by short sleeve and long sleeve.  The three blue buckets on the middle shelf are also from DT and hold hats, shoes, and bibs.  Above that there is a wall organizer from Ikea that holds other small items like mittens, legwarmers, washclothes, burp rags, diaper covers, and swaddling blankets.

 



The clothes hanging on the bottom are all shirts (non-onesies) sorted by short or long sleeve.  Below are old plastic drawers that we've had forever.  The smaller one is sorted by: white onesies, casual colored onesies, and pants.  The bigger one is sorted by: sleepers, sleep sacks/gowns/swaddlers, and thick blankets.  Between the closet and the changing table set up in our bedroom all of babies stuff stores easily in our bedroom thankfully.  (Bigger items like bumbo, travel bed, boppy, playmats, vibrating chair, etc are all stored on another closet shelf.)

There are still several other organizing projects I'm in the midst of, and I'd like to add on to some of the stuff.  I definitely think we have gotten 100x more organized than we were when we moved into this house 9 months ago though!  Hope that helps, Dana ;)