Do you find yourself cleaning up toys scattered all over your house at the end of the night, thinking “didn’t I JUST clean these up?!”
Or maybe you had another LONG day and you simply don’t have the energy (or mental capacity) to clean them up for the 15th time that day.
Until you wake up to a house that looks like it was hit by a tornado and you’re instantly filled with REGRET.
I end up wishing my kids never got another toy the rest of their lives!
Until, of course, I see the excitement on their face when they get a new toy. I can’t help myself when I see something adorable that I KNOW they would love.
Which once again, ends up in feelings of REGRET when I find myself swimming through the sea of toys once again.
Have the best of both worlds with this TOY ORGANIZING MOM-HACK to keeping your children’s toys ORGANIZED and PUT AWAY all while teaching them to clean up their toys THEMSELVES! It will keep them feeling like their toys are FRESH and NEW, and NEVER have toys randomly scattered throughout your house ever again!
Sound too good to be true?!
It’s not.
Here’s how:
Start with plastic bins. I LOVE these ones from Amazon because they are affordable and sturdy.
Depending on the amount and size of your toy supply, you may need to get a variety of sizes.
Go all “Marie Kondo” and pull out every single toy in your house and lay them out on the floor.
I like to organize them in groups that make sense and have a good amount of toys for each
Once you’re done, you will have every single toy stored in your assortment of bins.
YAAAASSS! Now we’re getting somewhere!
We have shelving units in our garage that are AMAZING from Costco. Our garage would be a wreck without them. We designated a few shelves for toy bins, and it has been LIFE CHANGING!
Now the key to success with this system is this one rule:
ONLY ONE BIN OUT AT A TIME!
Kids LOVE feeling empowered and able to make their own choices. When they ask to play with some toys, we go to the toy bins and let them pick out ONE BIN.
Then, they can dump it out, play to their heart’s content, go wild.
If they are over it and decide they want a different bin, great! The only way that happens though, is if they clean up their first bin completely and return it to its storage area.
Let me tell you…I HAVE NEVER seen a toddler CLEAN UP TOYS faster in my entire life. And once they get the hang of the process, they will clean up their bin without even being asked. Who knew a 2-year-old was even capable of this?! I had to pick my jaw up off the floor when my 2-year-old came to me with a neatly packed bin of toys saying “Mommy, can I please get a different bin?” 😱
Honestly, it still blows my mind how well this works.
This method not only keeps your house free of endless toy disasters, teaches your children to clean up after themselves, eliminates the constant hassle of yelling/begging/bribing them to PLEASE clean up their toys (followed by them “cleaning” them up at snail’s pace, causing your frustration to take over and end up doing it yourself), but it also keeps toys fresh and new! A new bin that they haven’t played with in a while can sometimes feel like Christmas!
Take back your sanity, and save that frustration for one of the other 475 things on your never-ending to-do list!
I hope this method changes the game for you as much as it did for me!
Comment below and let me know how it went, or any other life-changing hacks for toy organization! Honestly, nothing would make me happier than knowing this helped a fellow parent struggling to get through the day!
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