Toy closet makeover

The after, everything has a spot and a label.  Its so nice to open the door. 

The Before

 yes its not so pretty.  When we moved into our house we had an entire room that we used for toys so this closet was used to store games and extra junk.  When we added a new baby to our family we needed the room for her.  The closest was the best solution for toys.  Over the last year the toys were stuffed in along with the games it was always a mess and impossible to find anything.  About a month ago I got serious and organized it.  The best part is it still looks like the after pictures a month later!  A shock in our house.

Here are some of the details. 
First I divided the toys into as many categories as I could.  Don't go too detailed.  Most of the toys fit into shoe storage boxes from Qalmart.  They are only a dollar and actually hold quite a bit.  I love that they are clear and stack well. 

 

For some of the bulkier items (dress up shoes, lego duplo set, and play food)  I had some bigger containers on hand.  The middle tub holds kids puzzles, and the top shelf is used for kid game storage.  (I'll do another post on how I condensed and store them.)  All of the adult games were moved to another closet.

For the bottom half of the closet I added a 3 drawer container.  It is used for larger toys (again grouped together)  The top holds dolls (the clothes and accessories are in one of the smaller containers above).  The bottom two have dress up clothes.  It has been so much easier having these in drawers instead of a box like we use to have.

 The key was to label each box for easy clean up.  There are lots of cute, free labels online but none of them fit our boxes exactly.  To save ink I typed up each label and printed on white paper.  I then cut and glued to some cute scrapbook paper and then taped them to the container.  They are not fancy but they are cute and are easy to switch out if we ever need to.

 I wish this held all of our toys but it doesn't.  Some of the larger, bulky toys have a spot in my older girls' closet (like swords, balls, little people houses), the barbie house and big baby/toddler toys also have a spot in their room where they are played with regularly. 

 Clean up with all of their toys has been so much easier.  My kids are more likely to pull out one box at a time and can easily clean up their own mess.  Organizing and cleaning doesn't come natural to me but seeing how well this closet works for us has inspired me to "fix" the rest of our house to work for us.  I'll be sharing more of these "fixes" as I go.