Help! My playroom/basement is out of control!!

[Anonymous]

How do you organize moms tame the toy mess? I have a closet with elfa shelves in it, double doors that swing open (can't lock them), a train table housing a doll house, one of those preschool bucket style shelf organizer, and 5-6 wicker baskets sitting around the room, all stuffed with toys and games.

Here are my challenges:

1) I want the toys out of reach of the kids so they don't just drag out every toy and dump it on the floor (DS3's favorite thing to do)
2) I want to give away a LOT of toys and reduce the number of things my kids make messes with
3) I want to find a way to encourage the kids to clean up their mess and be able to at least give me the box to put away.
4) I'd like to rotate toys, but I don't have much storage that they can't get into (and defeat the purpose of rotating the toys).
5) I don't know the best way to store different kinds of toys... for example Barbies and their clothes, or oodles of Geo Trax, Legos, playdoh and the like

Has anyone got a handle on this and is willing to share?!? I have HAD IT with their messes!

[Anonymous]

At least it's in the basement. A mess in the basement is different from a mess in the main floors (says the mom whose toys are scattered across her basement floor).

I'd love to hear any ideas you have for making your kids clean up their toys!

In my basement/playroom, we have those closetmaid cubiblcles. Each toy/toys (each cubicle can hold more than one toy) gets placed in a Sterilite plastic bin (the shoe box size) and goes into a cubicle. That would be one solution for holding loose toys such as Barbie clothes, Geo Trax, etc. Downside is that your kids could reach them and drag it out.

I don't know - since it is the basement, I would say don't worry so much about keeping toys out of reach.

I keep my playdoh (and all art supplies) in one of those Sterilite Craft Drawers. I'm sure you've seen them at Target - http://www.sterilite.com/Category.html?Section=Storage&ProductCategory=151.

My ideas probably won't help you as much since I'm okay with keeping toys in arms reach for my kids.

But definitely check out Sterilite storage containers! You can even go to Dollar Tree and buy a whole bunch of their shoe box size containers for $1 a piece.

[Anonymous]

Thanks PP. I could be okay with my kids having free range to their toys if they could be trained (ROFL) to put them away before getting out a new one. Maybe that's where I differ (badly) from better moms who actually are on the floor playing WITH the kids, and supervise the transition from one toy to another thus ensuring they are put away. But I don't live in that reality. Mine is like, I'm upstairs making dinner, and DS13 is downstairs with the kids supervising their play. And all hell is scattered across the basement when I come down to call them up.

My biggest thing is going to be getting rid of fully 1/2 the toys and games. We are overflowing especially with stuffed animals and dress up clothes. That's another thing I could use help storing - dress up clothes for DD6. Good lord, she has every princess known to man, fairies, animal costumes, etc. With matching shoes and boas. Her stuff takes up the entire bottom floor in 5 tubs in the closet. Any ideas for that?

[Anonymous]

One word. FREECYCLE. Find a weekend, get a babysitter, get your DH and make three groups of stuff, one to keep, one to donate, one to trash. EVERYTHING has to go into a bag. Freecycle or find a good organization for the donation stuff and then start working on the organizing part. Something i have realized along the way is that I have to put some toys "away" b/c the kids simply have too much. Then I rotate the toys for new interest.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

13:22 - don't worry too much. Even when I'm down on the floor playing, we still have tons of toys scattered across the room! Granted, my kids are 3 and 1 but I still feel like hte 3 yo should put away toys. Haven't found a good way to reinforce that yet.

Could you do the old "if you haven't played with it in 6 months, it's going to Goodwill" as a way to get rid of toys?

Another thing I need to work on (maybe I'll start after Christmas...) is to cut down on the things I buy and get more strict with the grandparents. Do they really need another cheap toy from the dollar bin at Target that MIL just had to get even though they have others like it? Does your daughter really need another pair of dress up shoes?

You say her dress-up clothes take up 5 bins in the closet. Does she even wear them? What would happen if they were to suddenly disappear from the closet? Would she miss them? Maybe you could sneak some toys out of the closet and if the kids don't miss them in a few weeks off to Goodwill they go!

And again, stop buying stuff. I think I'll make that my New Year's resolution.

[Anonymous]

It's 14:21 again - needed to edit that I am also 13:22. I wasn't giving advice to 13:22.

[Anonymous]

Three months ago, I decided that it was time for me to get control over the toys in my house as well. My kids were 9, 6 and 1 at the time. Here is what I did.

I bought them shelves for their bedrooms. The shelves are solely to store toys that are nicer (somewhere between collectible and toys you play with), toys they don't want others to play with and little toy cars (because I can't stand when other kids play with them because they end up all over my house).

In order to organize the shelves, I bought the boxes that you use to organize photos. They are about $1.50 at Michaels or AC Moore. They use these for hotwheels and other cars and for small trinkets.

My next step was to do a major toy clean out. I involved all of the kids. The ground rules were this. If there is anything broken on it, it goes in the trash. If there are any missing pieces, it goes in the trash. And, if there are lots of small pieces that the baby will put in her mouth and you can't convince me that you played with it at least once in the last three months, it goes in the trash. Finally, if you argue with me, I will add more rules, which will mean that more stuff goes in the trash. In the end, I bet we got rid of almost six garbage bags of stuff and I didn't have to add to the ground rules.

Then we sorted between bedroom toys, playroom toys and toys that would be stored elsewhere. Games that we play often got moved to a shelf in the kitchen. Art supplies were moved to the office with the exception of crayons, which we use for homework so they stay in the desk in the kitchen. Books were moved to my bedroom because that's where we read. Coloring books were moved to the kitchen because that's where they color.

In our playroom, I have three sets of kitchen cabinets from Ikea that I use for storage and I have a set of shelves mounted on the wall. Games that we don't play much are on a wall shelf in the playroom. Hotwheel tracks are in a drawer. Videos that we don't watch together much anymore are also in a drawer. Puzzles are in a drawer. The rest of the toys are in a toybox. We have a few riding toys and really big Tonka trucks, which are lined up against the wall. Thomas the Train stuff has it's own toybox. The amazing thing is that after the toy cleanout, I have two empty drawers and three empty cabinets because with the exception of the big stuff and the bedroom toys, everything fits in the toybox.

As for keeping it clean, that's turned out to be surprisingly easy. At 7:30 each night, the kids have to get in their pjs and clean up toys. Once it's cleaned up to my satisfaction, they can watch TV until bedtime at 8:30. If they say it's clean and it's not, they lose TV for the night and have to go to bed early. We're three months and running and I no longer yell about the mess around my house. I feel like it's one of my hugest accomplishments in a long time.

[Anonymous]

^^ It sounds like a wonderful plan!! This is what I was hoping to get out of this post. Thanks!!

It sounds like you don't allow TV after school then? Which is a great idea too... So the kids get bathed and jammied by 7:30 and the last hour of the day is all the TV time they get? And they lose it if the house isn't picked up, per Mommy? I bet that IS hugely effective!

[Anonymous]

our method is similar to 17:06. our kids are 3 yo (almost 4). their only tv time is before bed (about 20min of some dvd). when we were having trouble with toy pickup, the rule was 'when you hear the buzzer go off, mommy is going to start the movie. feel free to join me in the living room when the toys are all away.'

we suffered through some procrastination/disbelief/tantrums etc, but I didn't budge from the basic rule. my dd went to bed only once without getting to see the movie. the boys always made it, though not necessarily for all of it.

I would warn them that cleanup would be in x minutes, and set the buzzer. Then I would tell them I would be starting the movie in x minutes and start the buzzer (I would estimate how long it should take if they were working and not dawdling).

In the case where one was working hard and another just playing, then I'd split the toys up. sometimes they could choose what they wanted to be in charge of (trains/cars/trucks or food or dishes/cups or Little People etc) and sometimes I would assign the toys (again an estimate on what was equal). so when their part was done, they could come watch the show (after I inspected the room of course!), and they wouldn't be affected by the dawdler.

now cleanup is pretty much a non issue. they are also okay about putting stuff away when they are done (at least the books and puzzles). if I walk in the room and see stuff on the floor and they're playing with something else, I call for immediate choice and cleanup of one of the toys, with a reminder to put something away before getting something else out.

everything except paint/glue/scissors is within reach of them. sometimes when they are dumping tons of toys into the shopping cart, I will remind them that they will have to put them away afterwards, but that's their choice.

our Geotrax are in a large rubbermaid type box in a cabinet. when they make a track though, I do let them keep it out for as long as they are playing with it. our duplos are in another large plastic box, and more duplos in the basket under the duplo table. they do alwas have to be cleaned up; they can build it again the next day.

our train table also stores the dollhouse, but the furniture/people are kept in a plastic bin under the table. we also store some of their larger trucks and other toys under the table as well.

good luck! I still have no idea what to do after birthdays and Christmas next month!