Since becoming a mom and surfing the mommy message boards and mommy blogs I've seen a lot of posts about toy storage. These always grab my attention because it's something I struggle with. We live in a small town home in NYC and space is not on our side. We have 2 toddlers (a boy and a girl) so we have a lot of toys!! Last week I saw Kristin at
Our Growing Garden write
this post and it inspired me to write my own. I wanted to show you that just because you have a tiny home it doesn't mean you cant keep toys organized. So here goes...
click to make bigger
Toy Kitchen-
What better place to store our toy kitchen then in the kitchen? Often while I am cooking the kiddos will go over and pretend to cook as well!
Now as much as Id like for them to keep all the play food and pots and stuff stored correctly in the kitchen, this just does not happen!! So I placed this nice basket next to it where all those things get dumped when they are done playing, nice and neat!
The Living Room-
I like to call this the "toy corner" of our living room, Ava's Stroller and a basket of rotating toys are always readily available for the kiddos to play with. The rotating toys are stored in Frankie's closet.
Ava's Pack and Play-
The child is a monkey (read about that
here ) so if I need to run upstairs, grab the mail, or use the bathroom, into the pack and play she goes! She just cant be trusted!
She goes gaga for balls, some stuffies, the shape sorter, Violet, and her purse full of "pretty bracelets" (she's a diva already!)
The Work Table-
Frankie sits at this table with his OT therapist it's pushed again the wall and really does not take much space up.
Speaking of OT I thought Id show you some of the toys we have in rotation right now as far as toys we play with to help his fine motor skills (I have tons more, this is just our current rotation)
Sorting Bears and Cups (available
here), stored in ziplocs and a shoebox
Melissa and Doug Lacing beads that you can buy
hereA home made piggy bank made out of a coffee container. I made a small slit that he has to fit the pennies through.
And all these toys are stored in the bottom of our coat closet, along with diapers and wipes! and then I just close the door =)
Crayons and Coloring Books-
They have more coloring books then they know what to do with, so I picked a few favorites as well as crayons and some dot markers and stored them in one the drawers in our kitchen table (thats were they do 90% of their coloring!)
Bath toys-
Other toys-
Now I really try to keep their toy play within the realm of helping Frankie with his therapy, he is a boy and loves the typical boy toys (cars, action figures, dinosaurs) So they are all stored in separate baskets and when Daddy comes home he is allowed to pick one that they play with. We store these in the bottom of a closet in our upstairs hall (Frankie has NO idea they are here, sneaky momma!)
(Building blocks, megablocks and army men are here too!)
Books-
These are stored in Frankie's room on this
carouselYou can check out pics
here I try to keep toys out of their rooms for the most part.
Well there you have it, that's how Momma "totally" stores her kiddos toys!!
Hope I inspired some of you with your own toy organization =)
Want to make my day? The follow me twitter
here
