Organize Kid Clutter, step by step

OK, it is day two of our organizing week and we are right now working on our crazy sink drawer that we shared yesterday. In the meantime, this is not one of those organizing play by plays with before, during, and after pics (that is this afternoon’s post) it is more a full breakdown of a system that works for us when it comes to taming the Clara-phernalia that threatens to take over our house. Around twice a week we get a question like: “can you do a post about how your organize Clara’s stuff? I could truly use some ideas on how to control the chaos!” So here is the rundown.

In the beginning it was fairly plain. She was little so we had a small ottoman and a basket with rattles and balls, and a swing and a few little blankets on the floor for tummy time. You can in fact read a post all about that stage of kid clutter here.

Well, that was child’s play compared to toddlerdom. Why? Those were the days before she had A MILLION AND ONE THINGS. Ok, I am exaggerating. But truly, the girl has books, crayons, bowls, drums, stuffed toys, faux food for her kitchen, buckets, balls, blocks, toy cars, and dolls galore. As much as we said we’d try to keep it plain and not buy more things than one toddler can play with, well, we got hand-me-downs and birthday/holiday gifts, and it all brought in up.

And I was not good quite quite bad at devising or maintaining any sort of system for nearly 10 months (fairly much since she got mobile it got crazier). I simply crammed the growing piles of kid clutter into various baskets and ottomans (seven of them!), never taking the time to group things so that I knew where to find them later. It simply all got piled in, and some nights it simply stayed on the floor because I was too tired. And remember our new ottoman which began out looking like this?

Well, that in fact became the key to my organizational epiphany. And now it looks like this (do not mind the pink tint, I forgot to white balance):

But that more cluttered “after” above is a good thing. It brings me immense joy that so many toys can be crammed in there. Why? I at last chose not to leave every last toy that Clara might play with out at all times. So many friends of mine said their kids were happier/more stimulated if their toys were switched out, instead of simply giving them free rein of a million things at once. And when I read this quote in The Happiness Project (remember John got me that for my b-day?), it sealed the deal:

The head of Eliza’s school told a story about a four-year-old who had a blue toy car he enjoyed. He took it everywhere, played with it constantly. Then when his grandmother came to visit, she picked up him ten toy cars, and he stopped playing with cars altogether. “Why do not you play with your cars?” she asked. “You enjoyed your blue car so much.” “I cannot enjoy plenty of cars,” he answered.

So right then and there I chose my big white ottoman would become my “toy store.” It would be the place I stashed every last toy that was not Clara’s current go-to. I literally combed through everything and pulled out only the “best-of” toys that she plays with all the time – the rest got piled into the bit white ottoman. Would you believe I was left with one basket?!

One glorious, manageable basket (from Target by the way). The kicker? It could be a developmental coincidence, but Clara began playing independently for longer stretches fairly much as soon as I made this switch. I am not sure if she was getting bored or overwhelmed with her old bounty of everything, but she certainly spent time with many of the things in her basket for longer periods than she used to when she had an explosion of too many toys to truly focus on anything for more than a minute. It was like Clara’s Greatest Hits: The Basket.

It takes way less time than you think to ruthlessly yank out anything your kid does not right now play with (no maybes, simply leave go-to toys only) and stash the rest in a big plastic bin in the closet or an under-bed storage container. Perhaps it took me half an hour total? And now I can clean up her basket in two minutes when she goes to bed – and swiftly rotate other toys in and out whenever the mood strikes. But I consistently keep it to one basketful. That is the key. She loves when new things show up, since it seems to keep her interested. Here is what is in there now:

A few go-to stuffed animals, a wooden pull toy, balls, a purse from Grammy, a few baby dolls, a dress up skirt that she wakes up and demands to wear, and a pot that she loves taking small items in and out of. But the go-to items are in fact in that fabric pouch (remember we got that for her as her Easter basket?). She likes the fabric pouch itself for the lively she has opening and closing the zipper…

… and as for what is in there: few go-to cars, a fake cell phone and John’s old disconnected real one, a wood train, a small ball, some plastic animals, a plane that we got her for our Hawaii trip, and a shaker, two sticks, and a scarf from music class.

This small pouch full of go-to toys likely comes into play at least four times a day – she loves it. And I enjoy that it all can get shoved into one basket every evening. Still have not gotten around to dusting the media cabinet though- haha. Someday…

In my new system, we also have two baskets of books. One in the office (which she likes to look at on the rug on her own or read in the chair with us)…

… and one in the living room.

Sure, she’ll bring a few books into other rooms throughout the day, but now that we have two designated book baskets, we know where they go. Books used to be mixed in with toys and balls and stuffed into ottomans in a bunch of places. Now it is pleasant and streamlined without any thinking necessary. Toys go in the toy basket and books go in the book baskets. Someday we will get her a bookcase but we are convinced she’ll simply take everything out of it every time we fill it up, so baskets work for now.

Recognizing how many Clara zones there are for her to enjoy truly helped me not get all down on myself for “limiting” the stuff that is at her disposal by stashing un-go-tos in the ottoman. For example, she has her coloring desk (which used to be our desk that we made from a door in our first house’s office):

I enjoy that you can tell she’s a leftie from her scribble. Awww. That is marker scribble, so it is something we do with her (those things can get messy, so we supervise markers, play dough, and chalk). But her crayons are simply stashed in that small zippered green pouch and her stickers are in the yellow pouch (both of which came from TJ Maxx for a few bucks, and offer her unlimited entertainment when it comes to taking things in and out and zipping and unzipping them).

Then in the hallway we have her rocker (a sweet gift from the grandparents a while back). She’ll randomly hop up from paging through a book or playing with her cars and simply walk into the hallway to rock for a little while (see how we kid-proofed the frames at the bottom of the wall here).

Then she has her Christmas play kitchen (that we Santa made for her here).

It thankfully stores all of her kitchen-stuff in the cabinet under the sink and that small metal shopping basket I found for 20 cents at a thrift store. So those things have a spot too. If I see one in the kitchen, I bring it back into her room and put it away instead of tossing it into a random jumbled basket.

We also have two baskets (from Linens N Things about five years ago) under her dresser, one that is full of blocks and one that is full of puzzles.

One of my biggest annoyances was that Clara could not do any puzzles since her puzzle board might be in one basket in the office and four of the pieces would be in the basket in the living room. So I organized them once and for all by giving them their own basket. Of course I still find pieces in the living room or the kitchen, but now I know where they go. So each night I typically make one trip back to her room as we are putting her to bed (with any puzzle pieces or play kitchen items that need to be dropped off). It is much faster than desperately searching for missing puzzle pieces and realizing they are all over the house and I am about to lose an hour of my life trying to find them.

I in fact got the puzzles-in-a-shallow-basket idea from my neighbor (she has a daughter about a year older than Clara). It might be obvious to some people, but after trying to shove them into big round baskets and ottomans (and hearing all the pieces clatter out and fall to the bottom), I saw shallow baskets next door and realized they were a strong way to keep the boards and pieces stacked together.

There is also a book basket in Clara’s room with a bucket of wood blocks next to it. They typically do not leave Clara’s room, but if they do the books can go into either of the other two book baskets, and the blocks get brought back at night when we bring play kitchen and puzzle pieces back. This might sound complicated, but it is one walk down the hall with stuff that goes into Clara’s room each night since we know what goes in there now. It is novel. And we are also starting to ask Clara to assist us clean up (she even sings the clean up song!) so sometimes she brings things back where they belong instead of us. That rocks too. It is pleasant that even Clara’s picking up that certain things have “a home” to be returned to.

Oh and here are those “supervised” activities that we do with Clara (they all get tucked into a drawer in the kitchen so they are special things we will whip out if she’s ever having a restless moment and we want to change things up. Since they are not consistently out at her disposal, they are consistently met with excitement.

And when it comes to outdoor activities, the rock box has continued to be a hit among toddlers. Our three year old neighbor in fact joined Clara in a little Sunday afternoon rock romp, so it is pleasant to know that it is another “zone” where Clara can have some lively and dig around.

One organizational thing that we do need to tackle is an outdoor storage bin (we are thinking of grabbing something like this) for the buckets and trucks that do not fit inside her rock box when it is covered. So we will keep you posted! In the meantime, that is our kid-clutter rundown. We have no idea if this system will work for us when Clara and her toys get bigger – in fact I’d bet that it’ll keep changing and evolving – but you know we will journal all about it as we go.

What do you folks swear by when it comes to organizing kid stuff? I am sure there are a million ways to skin this cat (gross expression, sorry) so we’d enjoy to hear what works for you. My BFF has a giant playroom packed to the gills with stuff and her children enjoy that room, so there are certainly plenty of ways to go!

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