How to Organize Toys -

For little ones, toddlers and older kids; Categorize and organize toys; Toy storage spot ideas; General toy storage; Quiet toys; Board games; Basement toys; Arts & crafts storage; Labels.

Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my! Do you feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when you get overwhelmed with your children’s toys? If you answered yes, then have no fear, your fairy godmother is here! (Hey, that rhymes!) By fairy godmother I mean me!

Let me help you sort and organize your kids’ toys so that you can feel at ease with all of their things and also feel like you have control and order with all the toys. This one is a juicy one so let’s get started!

With Crawling Little Ones

When our little one was younger, our toy storage had the main function of containing the toys and concealing them in non-transparent bins. That way, the colour scheme was neutral and not “in your face” with all the different bright colours kids’ toys can have. Also, having bins without lids made it easier for our tiny bean to pick and choose what he wanted quickly and efficiently which prompted autonomy. Yay!

Here is the unit we used when it seemed like our house was producing toys. We got it on sale at a reasonable price and it served its main purpose of containing all the toys. What I also like from this unit it that, I was able to (later on) label the bins and create categories to help our little one put away similar toys together. That way, he came to know the system (out of memory) as to where to put back the toys or where to look for a specific toy.

Picture and link to the 12-bin organizer from Canadian Tire. — https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/for-living-12-bin-espresso-organizer-0682997p.html

Keep in mind, this is what we chose to do, so you are more than welcome to choose a system that is different from ours. I’m not going to lay down the law about toy storage. It’s all about function, practicality, look and budget so make sure to personalize it to your needs.

With Toddlers

When we moved, I decided to upgrade our toy storage unit and went with a crate system with a couple of open baskets.

Picture of our crate storage system for toys when we first moved into our current home.

Eventually, I changed what we currently had (which were open bins) to closed ones. Now that our little one was older, I felt like we could now have closed bins that he could open by himself. I personally no longer felt like the open bins gave off a clean and organized look.

Furthermore, the open bins we had were a solid colour which meant that if you wanted to know what was in it, you had to pull it out of the shelf. Pulling our a basket every time is not the most practical for a little one that has no idea what patience is (right moms?!)

Picture of our crate toy storage in our playroom.

The containers we now use have lids and are clear which makes it easy to see what’s in it at a glance. I initially thought it might look messy to have clear bins, but the fact that they’re all the same and have lids to contain the toys actually make it feel like it looks more organized and clean than it did before.

Categorize The Toys

If you follow The Home Edit, you know that Clea and Joanna mainly like to sort items by colour. I’ve done this with kids books in our play room but I didn’t feel like it was the way to go to organize toys (well, not all of them).

Picture of some of the books we have in our playroom organized by colour just like a rainbow.

I personally decided to organize toys by category so it would make it easier to put them away or to find specific toys. Here are other category ideas that you can use to sort toys:

quiet vs loud
by colour
by type
by size
easily accessible or not (ei: craft supplies)

To help you make a decision about the categories you will be creating, make sure to gather all of the toys together. Bring everything out (and I mean everything!) and plop it all in one pile. Yes, this will be overwhelming but I can assure you, it’s a necessary part of this process.

First off, what this step does it that it makes you visually see how much you have. If you find there is too much, this is the time to start sorting through it all and tossing out toys if you want to.

Group Similar items together and create piles and categories From there, you will get a better understanding of what you have. You will be able to see a trend with the types of toys you have and then be able to assess if the ones you do have are the ones that your kids actually play with or not.

Once all the categorizing and classifying is done, it’s time to find a “home” for the toys. I am aware that we are not all fortunate enough to have play rooms to contain and store all the toys. Even without a playroom, there is always a way to figure out the best nook to store (or hide) all the toys.

I know for a fact that even though we have a playroom, in our current home, off of our living room, that the organized toys always find their way in the living room or even in the kitchen. So just so you know, it’s not necessarily better or easier with a playroom in the house.

Toy Storage Spot

If you don’t have a playroom, do your best to find a corner or piece of furniture that can be temporarily converted to store toys. The basis of this idea is to have a designated area where the kids know where to find and put away the toys.

Myquillyn Smith talks about considering the purpose of your space in her book “Cozy Minimalist Home”. Here is what she wrote in Chapter 4 pages 85-86:

My sister-in law, Sheri, and her family live in a three-bedroom house with a family room, dining room, and eat-in kitchen. Their two teenagers are into music and crafting, and as their talents and interest have grown, their bedrooms have begun to fill. Then they were given a real piano, but there was no place to put it. They had a space problem. But when Sheri considered the purpose of every room in her house, she realized that they used the dinning room only a few time a year. Here she was, trying to make great use of every inch of her home, but because the builder called one room a dinning room, it bossed her into assuming she needed to use it as a dinning room. Until she didn’t. When she evaluated how they truly used their space, she decided she could reclaim en entire room. She sold their dinning room furniture and instantly gained an extra room in her home that now holds a real piano and crafting supplies fit for a young Martha Stewart. Every room needs a purpose, and this is the time to decide how your room will best serve you and your family for the next few years.

Keep in mind that toys, although cumbersome at times, are only a small phase of your child’s life. This storage solution you are looking into right now will not be permanent.

Storage Ideas

There are plenty of toy storage ideas that you can find on blogs as well as on Pinterest. I’ve taken the liberty to create a Pinterest board with different types of toy storage ideas just for you.

If you’re looking for inspiration and ideas, make sure to check out my Toy Organization board on Pinterest.

Our General Toy Storage

I’ve had the crate shelving unit for a while now. It was easy to make and to customize. I bought 8 wooden crates at Giant Tiger and painted the inside white and stained the outside of each one. I then went ahead and attached them together with a nail gun.

There are plenty of different designs that can be done with crates so before you go and purchase them, make sure to at least have an idea of your design so you know just how many you should get.

Like I mentioned earlier, we initially had open baskets as storage in this shelf and now have closed bins.

I went and got 9L plastic containers with lids at Dollorama and they fit perfectly in the crates! I can pile more items than I could before with the baskets, being that I can put 2 containers in one crate. The containers store the majority of the toys that we have. For other types of toys, here’s what we do.

Quiet Toys/Games

I got a chest at Enviroplus for around $20 and refinished it with chalk paint so that it would fit the style of our playroom.

Picture of the chest I refinished with chalk paint to store our quiet toys.

I then assigned this chest to organize toys such as puzzles, look’n’find books, etc; aka quiet toys. When it’s time to relax and play quietly, our little one knows where to go to find these types of toys.

Picture of the inside of our quiet toy chest.

As for the puzzles, as you can see, they are not in their original packaging or boxes. They are much easier to access in these zipper pouches then they were before. Now, they have more room to breath. When out little one opens the chest, he can actually see all the puzzles he has at a glance and get them out easily.

Picture of a closer look of the bag I use to store our puzzles in the quiet toy chest.

Board Games

We assigned an old dresser (that I’ve also refinished with chalk paint) to hold all our board games. I didn’t want them to get mixed up with all the toys from the playroom upstairs so I stored separately so that it would be easier to find them when we needed to.

As you can see, I’ve also used the mesh bags from Amazon for these as well. This way, they take up less space and it makes it harder to lose pieces.

Picture of the inside of one of the drawers in the dresser showing how the games all fit in the drawer is stored in a mesh bag.

Basement Toys (aka: louder toys)

Since we were able to finish our basement this past winter/spring with the pandemic, I took advantage and assigned a chest (that I also refinished; can you tell I like to refinish furniture with chalk paint? lol) for louder toys that are only used in the basement.

Picture of an old chest I refinished with chalk paint to store louder toys in our basement and that can also be used as extra seating space.

What I love about this idea is that the chest can also serve as extra seating in our basement so that when we have friends over playing games and hanging out in the basement, we should have plenty of seating.

Picture of the inside if the chest in our basement.

Craft & Art Supplies

I don’t know about you, but I prefer to be able to supervise anything related to arts and crafts to make sure it doesn’t land where it shouldn’t. For that reason, anything related to craft is stored in the closet in the Den/Playroom or in the craft storage closet in my office.

Picture of how I organized our arts and craft supplies in the playroom closet.

Kids’ bedroom

Because we have a playroom, as you can see, we don’t store toys in our little one’s bedroom. The only thing we’ve chosen to store there are books. However, if you would like to store specific toys in your little one’s bedroom, I would recommend to have a designated area where everything should be returned when it’s not being played with. Assigning a specific category of toys for the bedroom will also help when it’s time to clean up. For example, you may want to keep Lego for your oldest in their bedroom so that you little one doesn’t get any pieces in their mouth.

Labels

If the storage option you end up choosing also gives you the option and room to label it, I say “do it!”. I remember how friends of mine would laugh at the fact that I had labelled bins when my little one had only begun talking and couldn’t even read. My reasoning behind this was that:

(1) The labels helped me and my husband know where the toys went. What this subsequently did was to show our little one where the toys should go when we were putting them away.
(2) The labels would also help us see everything at a glance and know what we had and what was missing.

After reading this blog post on toy organization, do you feel that you are better equipped to tackle that project in your own home? Have I neglected an aspect of the toy organization process? Let me know in the comments blow, I’d love to know what you think.