How to Organize Your Playroom in 5 Simple Steps

If your kids got as many gifts as mine did this Chanukah, it might be time for a playroom refresh. For most people hearing the words “organize the playroom” does not conjure up happy feelings. In this post, I’ll give you some tips that will make it simple for you to cut the clutter and create an organized playroom that your kids (and you) will love!

1. Clear Out

Every organizing project must start with clearing out the space. Take out all of your toys and get to work. You want to throw out broken toys and donate any toys that your kids have grown out of. If there are any toys that your kids don’t play with anymore, consider donating these as well. Depending on your kids’ ages you can choose to involve them or not.

2. Storage Ideas

Once you have gotten rid of the toys that your kids don’t need, it’s time to figure out how to best store the remaining toys. Choose which containers will work best for your space and your kids. If you have closets in your playroom, the best thing would be bins with lids so you can stack them in your closet. This is my personal favorite storage idea because it looks great and you can get different size bins for different toys.

My favorite bins for toys are the Sterilite latch bins because of their quality and the large selection of sizes to fit all kinds of toys. See below for more details about which size fits which type of toys. A more budget-friendly option (shown in the picture below) is the Room Essentials storage bins which you can find here.

If you don’t have closets, your best bet would be to get cube shelving with cube bins.

For books, you’ll want to have adequate shelf space, either in a closet or out in the open for book storage.

3. Divide and Conquer

Once you choose which storage option will work best for your playroom, you’ll want to divide everything into categories depending on your toys. Here are some examples to get you started:

• Cars/Trucks
• Magna Tiles
• Train
• Dolls
• Stuffed Animals
• Puzzles
• Mr. Potato Head
• Baby Toys
• Doctor Set

Of course, you should customize this to your toys. Sometimes, you may have a lot of a certain type of toy and you may need more than one bin for that.

Once you have figured out which categories make sense for you, you’ll want to actually put those toys into the correct bin or box.

4. Label

Last but not least, you’ll want to label these bins/baskets so that it will be easy for everyone to put toys back in the correct place (well at least we hope so!) If you’re using different size bins and baskets, this becomes more important since you want everything to end up in the right bin. If you’re using cube bins, this isn’t as important since everything is going into the same type of basket but if you do want to label them, I like these. I like chalkboard labels since they are erasable. Since you’ll be moving stuff around as you get more toys or get rid of toys, it will be easy to adjust your labels.

5. Other Tips

Tip #1:

Get rid of as much packaging as possible! This tip applies not only to toy storage but to all types of storage! Packaging takes up more space than necessary and is not usually good quality for long-term use. Also, it can sometimes come in strange shapes that don’t fit well with your other toys. Therefore, you want to get rid of as much packaging as possible and place everything into bins or baskets.

For this reason, I like to store games and puzzles in bins instead of keeping them in their original box. For puzzles, take a picture on your phone of the completed picture on the box. Next, print out a picture at your local photo store and tape or glue it to the inside of the bin lid. This way, you’ll still know what the puzzle looks like, even if you don’t have the box. For card games, I like bins like this.

Tip #2:

There are some things that are just too big to fit in bins and that is totally fine. You’ll just need to figure out where to place them so that they are not in the way. Some of these things can be left out in the open all the time such as dollhouses, kitchen sets, etc. while some things (such as baseball bats) are slightly too big for a bin but can be stashed away in the bottom of a closet, a toy chest, or an ottoman.

I hope these tips help you organize your playroom without overwhelm! Have any other ideas? Let me know in the comments below! For more playroom-related posts, click here.