Like most Mothers of small children I am always battling the never-ending SEA of “plastic” that seems to be like a plague that slowly infects our house. Although I’ve tried placing random baskets around the house to put said plastic toys in, they just don’t ever seem to stay tidy very long…and the toy room often becomes the battlefield of my fight against plastic!
Well I have a very good friend named Missy (LOVE HER) that is just one of those super impressive people and I’ve always admired how neat and tidy her house always seems to be (even though she also has three boys). So I looked to her as my mentor. Her solution? STORAGE BINS!
So the last few months I’ve kept my eyes out for a sale on storage bins (can you tell I love a good deal?) and this last weekend was able to find a great sale at Shopko where they were selling 17 gallon bins for $3.88. Sa-weet! So I went to stock up. While there I also noticed that they had a plethora of smaller storage bins on sale for only $1.34 a piece! Boo-ya! And I may or may not have gone a little crazy and spent $75 on bins! BUT…I think it quite a small price to pay for my and Adam’s sanity and to finally have a house that is ORGANIZED!
Below is what I had to start with.
Notice the plethora of big boxes that we still haven’t gotten around to unpacking since moving in 2 years ago! Yikes!
It only took me about 4 HOURS but I was finally able to go through every single bin, box, and container in that playroom and sort through all the kids toys. Many I put in storage bins to take downstairs, and many I put in boxes to give to D.I. And the rest were put into their own little new bin to be used ONE at a TIME!
Notice the boxes are gone! Yay! They finally got UNPACKED
I was able to bring these shelves up from our garage, wash them down, and then use them to put the bins in. One day I hope to also get around to painting them (and the room for that matter.) After that I brought all three of my boys into the room, and we talked about how we can’t open one bin until we’ve cleaned up our previous bin and put it back on the shelf. All three boys did WONDERFULLY with this new rule and I couldn’t believe the difference in how clean the play room stayed. We even had friends over the next day and the kids continued to do great!
We have a bin for balls, trucks cars and airplanes, animals, figurines, dinosaurs, a race track, play food, tools for the tool bench, lego’s, blocks, puzzles, dress up clothes and accessories. I was also able to pick up another set of shelves (like the ones below) at a yard sale for $4 yesterday and those have now become the shelves that hold all the kids larger items like their pirate ship, bigger cars, helicopters, cars, and games.
Now onto project number two. The BASEMENT!
I can’t wait!