Toy Land

Once upon a time, there was a little child’s room full of wonderfully, magical toys!

Toys! Toys!  Aauuuuggghhh!!!!!

Wait, that’s not how a fairytale goes.  Fairytales are sweet & magical. But children change so fast from the time they are born until they are teenagers that unless you have a magic wand it seems impossible to stay on top of the growing toy mountain.  (We won’t discuss what happens when the bell tolls time to crossover to teenagedom.  That’s for another bedtime story.)

A long, long time ago in a land far away, when I was little, all of my toys fit on the floor of my small closet.  My toys could have fit in Red Riding Hood’s basket.  Today, toys are so large they may make you feel you live in a shoe & don’t know what to do.  (Maybe it’s time to rewrite the nursery rhymes to include efficient storage bins.) The size difference is not the only change between then & now.  Then, children received toys at Christmas & birthday.  Now toys are added almost year round. Kids are much more blessed today.  And with those blessing, you’ll need more time editing & a little more creativity in storing the age appropriate toy that should remain.

If editing⎯which is also known as purging ⎯is done a little at a time, it will never be a huge, overwhelming, I-want-to-cry task.  With a smaller task comes an easier time involving the kids in decision making.

Children tend to be natural hoarders because they are still learning the concept of moving forward.  They don’t understand that they will outgrow their (fill in the blank) & that something “way cooler” awaits them around the corner.

You have to open your hands to let go and receive.  By working with your children to remove outgrown toys when new have arrived, you teach them this valuable lesson.  And because tidying/organizing naturally happens during this process, you’ll be teaching them to organize at the same time.  Two very valuable lessons they will use in every area of their life all rolled into the simple act of letting go of old toys to receive new.

As for the creativity of storing these wonderful, new toys, there are some really neat (no pun intended) ideas for general storage & tools designed for storage of specific items.  I’ll be posting items & ideas on the Styled & Organized Living Facebook page through the rest of the month.  With the proper tools or a creative way to use a tool, you can turn toy storage from a nightmare into a fairytale.