Managing the overflow of toys has hands-down been my biggest clutter challenge to date. No one with children needs to told how quickly and how easily the toy situation can spiral completely out of control. So I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you how we’re regaining control of the toys.
If you read regularly, you’ll know that we have three small children and moved in the past year. Our new house is absolutely perfect, but it is tiny—about 1300 square feet. That doesn’t leave too much room for living space, so we use a first-floor room as a combo toy/TV room. We have some overflow in the basement for larger items like a kitchen set and tent and an old coffee table in Frankie’s workshop for messy art things, like paint. We do not keep any toys in the bedrooms except for some stuffed animals and books, so we strive to keep the great bulk of the toys in the toy room. Trying to keep all of the toys in a small space has been disastrous, as one might expect.
Over winter break I tried to declutter with the kids Marie Kondo style, but it didn’t work. We lived in chaos over the spring semester with me occasionally bagging up whatever the kids left on the floor and hiding the bags in the garage. Each bag contained a hideous combination of unrelated objects, ranging from Barbie shoes to broken crayons to scraps of paper cover in spilled juice. It was gross. I really didn’t want a repeat of the spring semester as far as the house went this fall, so I knew that I had to get the toy room in shape over the summer. With school starting on Monday (how’s that for procrastination?), I finally buckled down today to finish the job. Here are things that work for us to make clean-up easy and to prevent messes from escalating.
The Rug
Our home has lovely hardwood floors, which are excellent for sending objects sliding in all directions. Before we got the rug, an astonishingly large amount of clutter got wedged under the sofa, lost for months at a time. Shoes and clothes went missing, sippy cups got moldy, and random pieces of toys and games hid out under there. Getting the rug has drastically reduced the ease with which junk slides under the sofa, preventing stuff from going missing in the first place. The rug isn’t anything fancy—just a bound remnant from Ollie’s for about $70. No need to go fancy or expensive on something that will be used mostly by little kids.
The Shelf
We got this awesome shelf at IKEA (Kallax model) last year for about $200. It measures about six by six feet and has 25 cubes. You can add drawers, doors, and other accessories as needed, and IKEA sells bins that fit inside the cubes perfectly (the green and polka-dot ones in the picture). Each cube holds a designated object or category of objects, and each girl gets a cube where she can keep one special toy. One toy isn’t a lot, but I found that any more than one toy was unmanageable. The top row allows some room for my knitting and books and family photos.
Book Bins
I got some book bins at Wal-Mart for coloring books and library books. The bin works well to hold floppy coloring books upright, and I can cram loose-leaf paper in there for Bug to color. The other book bins are specifically for library books and library books only. We’ve had a few go missing as they mix in with the family’s collection, and the bins make it easier to keep track of them and prevent fines. Now that Bug has her own library card, she’s on notice that she’ll be paying any fines for her books if she can’t find them before the due date. The bins came in a set of five, so I put two in the girls’ rooms.
The Sofa
Yes, I have a slipcover on a slipcovered sofa. When Bug was a baby, I bought the IKEA Ektrop sofa and loveseat set in white. The white washes pretty well, but removing the cover to the frame is tricky. I gave up on washing out anything besides body fluids and covered up the whole thing with something I got from Wayfair. It’s very easy to clean, and I let the kids play without stressing about them ruining the sofa. I made sure to get a colorful pattern that can hide the occasional marker or crayon streak. The top cover also minimizes the amount of crud that slides under the cushions, so I don’t have to vacuum as often.
Overflow
In the interest of getting things done, I have to admit that I didn’t actually get rid of too much. We still have most of the toys. I unpacked all of the bags and boxes of toys that I could and matched up all of the pieces to each (Frankie took the kids to Nana’s today—this is not a project to do with the kids around). Once each toy had all of its pieces, I put it into a giant storage bin and moved the bin to the garage. Right now we have three bins full of toys that we can go through when we have time. The remainder are going to Nana’s, Goodwill, and the garbage.
Maintenance
Moving forward, I think that the toy room will be pretty easy to keep clean. If I can get everything off the floor and vacuum each night, I’ll be happy. We now have a clean, open space where the kids can do puzzles and play with their train set and building blocks. I have a nice space to do pilates, and Frankie and I have a clean place to relax while we watch TV. After everyone has settled into the routine of a new semester, I’ll probably bring a bin of toys out for the kids to purge or rotate. But until then, we’ll all just forget that the overflow exists and enjoy our tidy room.
