Right before we had James, we moved into a newly renovated apartment, and finished decorating it just in time for his arrival. I swore we wouldn’t be those parents whose entire apartment is taken over by toys. I swore we wouldn’t buy James that many toys. After all, they really only play with a few of them and prefer to just bang on pots and pans, I said. And then we had James, and two years later, our apartment is overflowing with toys. Honestly, I don’t even know where they come from. Honestly, we’ve been pretty good about not spoiling him with toys (except for Christmas this year — I totally went overboard without even realizing it until it was too late but that’s another blog post). And yet, there are toys in every corner of our apartment. Our living room has become a parking lot for scooters, ride on toys, baby strollers, motorcycles, tricycles, and god knows what else. James’ room is overflowing with toys. He just gets so many toys — hand me downs from friends and family, gifts, and some things, I really have no idea where they came from but here they live.
The thing is, we really don’t have a good system for storing them right now, so anytime he wants to play with a toy, he dumps out a huge toy box or bin with a million toys. Not only does it make it hard for him to know what toys he has, so he doesn’t even play with the millions of toys he has, but it also creates a huge mess every. single. day. Knowing that we’re looking for a house with far more room, I’ve been holding off on investing in some elaborate storage and organization system, telling myself this is only temporary, but I can’t stand it any longer! I cannot live amongst this clutter any longer. As part of my New Year’s resolution, I’ve decided to clean out the clutter, from my closet and our life, and start getting us ready to move into a new house with a clean slate (even though we are nowhere near being ready to move). First up, finding a way to corral all the toys and store them in a way that’s more pleasing to the eye and more functional without spending a fortune or at least in a way that can easily move to a new location (i.e., without investing in built-ins (what I’d really like to do) or an expensive free standing toy storage system.
I always like to scour Pinterest and Instagram for inspo when looking for decorating and organization help and I’ve gathered some of my top inspo that I’m thinking we’ll try for James’ stuff — plus, I rounded up my favorite organization bins and furniture. Happy organizing! Oh, and please share your tips and inspo pics. We need help!
My favorite storage containers for kiddos:
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