The holiday season is finally over. Although the hustle and bustle of the busiest time of year has passed, your house looks like a Category 5 tornado carrying wrapping paper and Amazon boxes has come through leaving behind a mass of toys in its wake. Your child’s playroom has been overcome with an insane amount of stuff and not enough places to put it. The new year is a perfect time to step up your playroom organization game. A few added pieces can really help get everything organized, making sure that toys get put back where they belong easily (well, relatively easily).
Here are 5 play room organization tips to get you started on a more sane New Year (again, relatively):
Do the Post-Christmas Purge
If you didn’t do a pre-Christmas purge, the new year is the perfect time to get rid of all the extra toys your child doesn’t use or play with anymore. If a toy hasn’t been used in a year, it’s time to toss it. There are a few different ways you can get rid of toys without filling up your local landfill:
- Donate them: Many people often fill up bags and bins to take their old toys to large donation centers. However, these places are often overrun with items, making your clutter turn into their clutter. Try finding a local childcare center, foster home, doctor or dentist offices, or local children’s hospitals instead.
- Sell them: If your toys are in good, working condition you can also sell them at second-hand stores. Be cognizant that places like these often get overrun with smaller toy items, so you may get turned away.
- Recycle: Most toys are made with plastics that are difficult to recycle in your municipal garbage. Electronic toys can often be recycled with many city-wide e-waste management programs. There are some organizations in which you can mail your used and broken toys to recycle but they are often limited and only accept items during certain times of the year. Check your local waste management to see if they are capable of recycling your toys.
Tip to Make your Playroom Organization Extraordinary: If there are some items you just can’t bear to give away yet, put them away in a bin and store them. You can either bring them out when your child asks, or, in 6 months, finally donate or recycle them.
Purchase New Playroom Organization Tools
You’ve done one of the hardest things- gotten rid of all the old toys- but now it’s time to figure out where to put the new ones. After the holidays the last thing you want to do is spend more money, but somethings are simply worth the investment. And your sanity is one of those things.
Toy Organizer
A storage shelf is a must-have in every playroom. Not only does it allow you to get everything off of the floor, it also allows you to better organize your child’s toys so they are easy to clean up and easy to find when it’s playtime.
A toy organizer like this one is key when it comes to keeping your playroom organized. The shelf is the perfect size for kids so they can easily access everything on it. It also comes with 8 toy storage bins in coordinating neutral colors so you can be organized (and stylish) right from the get-go.
One of the best parts about this toy organizer is its slanted shelves. The slanted shelves allow the bins to be visible from the top so your child can easily see what is inside without taking out every single bin and dumping the contents on the floor. It also helps with easy clean-up because they can see what should go in there.
Book Shelf
Books are the cornerstone to any child’s playroom but keeping them neat and organized is a challenge. Traditional bookshelves are often messy looking. Books are constantly falling over and don’t stand up, or they are just shoved in there making everything look disorganized. It also makes it harder for your child to see what books are available, making it more likely that they pass them by without a second thought.
However, this open concept bookshelf allows kids to easily see the book covers, making them more likely to stop, drop, and read. All of the books face outward so covers and illustrations are visible. It also helps to keep the books neat and organized- books are no longer falling over and your kids can easily slip them back into the slots when they are done.
Tip to Make Your Playroom Organization Extraordinary: To make the book area more accessible and inviting, try rotating the books out by season or theme. You can also surround the area with comfy pillows and a few soft toys or blankets so kids will want to cozy up and read.
Make it Visual
No matter what the age of your children, when you tell them it’s time to clean up your words are met with a level of resistance like protestors on Pennsylvania Avenue. Oftentimes it’s not only that cleaning up isn’t the most fun thing to do, but it’s also that your child- especially the youngest ones- feel a bit overwhelmed. They look at all the toys and think, “Where do I start?” (kind of like that feeling you get when you look at your Monday morning email inbox).
A simple way to help keep your play room organized is by creating visual aids. Instead of using labels to mark where items should go, use pictures. For example, if you have toy cars that need to be put in a basket, take a picture of the cars and attach it to said basket. When it is time to clean-up your child will be able to easily identify where the cars should go without getting overwhelmed.
Tip to Make Your Playroom Extraordinary: Laminate the pictures, hole punch one corner, and use colorful ribbon to tie the pictures to baskets and bins. If you are placing the pictures on furniture, use decorative tape to make it more fun.
Keep Everything Off of the Floor
There is something about having toys on the floor, even if they are organized that just leaves things looking messy. By keeping everything off of the floor (moving big toys to the edges of the room) your space will feel bigger and your kids will have more room to play.
Designate a Dress-up Area
If you have approximately 725 dress-up dresses, capes, occupational costumes, and princess outfits, get little hangers and hang them up in a closet with a low-hanging rack or create a dress-up area with an old bookshelf. But don’t get just any hangers because regular straight hangers will have you pulling your hair out from having to hang things back up several times per day. Make it easier for the kids and for you by investing in hangers that actually keep the clothes on them.
Tubular hangers with divots are great for dresses that have smaller straps. It helps to catch the dresses so they aren’t sliding off. Velvet hangers are also great for just about any clothing item in your dress-up area: the velvet catches the fabric so nothing slides down off of the hanger.
Tip to Make Your Playroom Organization Extraordinary: Organize your dress up stuff by category so your child can easily find what they are looking for (i.e., princess dresses, occupational items, superhero costumes, etc).
Use Baskets for Easy Clean-Up
One of the easiest ways to help organize your play room is to use large baskets and bins. Parents can’t expect little kids to put everything on a shelf neat and straight, but bins and baskets allow kids to clean up the best way they know how- to shove everything in one spot.
If you have bigger items like stuffed animals or baby dolls that need organization, a large laundry basket like this one is great for easy and fast playroom organization. It is big enough to fit those bigger toys that need a spot but not so big that it takes up significant space.
Smaller bins are good for smaller toys like cars, trains, playdough tools, and other small items. Separate the items by category like “Cars, “Farm Animals,” and “Dolls” so that when it’s clean-up time your kids know exactly which toys go in what bin, and when it’s play time they know exactly where to find it.
Tip to Make Your Playroom Organization Extraordinary: Get color coordinating items so that your playroom looks well-put together. Neutral, natural, and soft colors like the Explore + Store line from Honey Can Do will allow your playroom to immediately have a calmer feel.
Do you want these items for your playroom? Find everything you need to up your playroom organization from Honey Can Do here.
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Toy Organizer | Book Shelf | Kid-Sized Velvet Hangers | Kid-Sized Blue Hangers | Striped Laundry Basket | Grey Stripe Storage Bin | Mint Storage Bin | Multi-stripe Storage Bin
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