Storage Solutions

 Spring Organizing

The nicest compliment I received this week was, “This girl is passionate about storage solutions!”

Why yes, organizational storage ideas are my thing!  And if you take a look at my Pinterest board, cube shelves are the thing.  My solution.  For everything.

Am I good at implementing them?  No.

Is my house picture-perfect organized?  No.

Do I nail pallets together in some Pinterest-worthy DIY upcycling project?  Um…no.  {It is my hope to someday make stuff… currently we can’t take on any more until we finish building a house! :P}

Do I come up with a solution right away when I first notice there’s a problem?  Definitely not!  {Most of these should have been done at least 2 years ago!  But I’m working on being better about this!}

Now that we have all incorrect assumptions taken care of, this is what I DID get done in the past two weeks!

So far this is working really well!  Olaf caught on super fast to the concept that we only take out one box at a time, and pick it all up before getting out the next thing.  He also likes to carry the box to wherever I am and dump it out to play there (i.e. on the kitchen floor while I am making a meal).  I like the ease of putting everything back in the box and taking ONE BOX back to the shelf, instead of having to carry one thousand small pieces back to the toy spot.

He also is more focused when playing with only one kind of toy! (21 months old)  His attention span is longer and he’s not as ADD about what he’s playing with compared to when ALL the toys were surrounding him in a big pile!  Apparently, I’m not the only one to notice this.

We have boxes for:

1. Dishes/containers/cooking sets
2. Baby toys
3. Wooden blocks (marble run)
4. Cars and trucks
5. Playmobile and farm “sets”
6. Misc.

Duplos (already in their own nice container) and big books sit on top.

Upstairs we will have

1. Wooden (toddler) puzzles
2. Noah’s ark and animals
3. Stuffed animals/other toys
4. through 6. Open for more books

It will be a simple matter to rotate out toys from upstairs/downstairs if some don’t get played with as much.

We also added a shelf in the bookshelf so it fits more books and also is easier to see where they belong according to size (small books fit on the small shelf, etc.).  This is opposite the cube shelves in the living room so that it is not such a pile when the toys and books are all pulled out at once!

The most recent area I tackled was my closet – changing it to OUR closet (so Ben could actually have most of his clothes in our room instead of the kid’s room closet).  And getting shelves lower so they are easier to reach.  Once again, a simple metal shelving unit, that was on sale as well, came to the rescue!   I don’t have a before picture, but you can imagine what it was like; knee deep with everything-that-doesn’t-have-a-place-goes-in-the-closet, several boxes (maternity and off-season clothes – these will be moved to another place) and the only spot for clothes was up high above the rod.

 A Place for Everything

I’ve realized two things with this spring nesting.  {And no, I’m not pregnant!}  

Less is more.  It is MUCH easier to keep the house tidy when it is simple, and not cluttered with a lot of STUFF.  I try to be a bit of a minimalist when it comes to accumulating children’s toys, but I could do a lot better in this area and with clothes as well.

The old adage is really true, A place for everything and everything in it’s place.  When things don’t have a place to go, it’s very hard to put them away!  As we accumulate stuff, items need to be assigned a “home,” so we all know where they belong!  By creating homes for toys, shoes, clothes, gadgets, etc. we make them no longer homeless on the stairs, or squatters on our carpet!

Now, on to the implementation of what I know… Ole’s bedroom is what I’m tackling next!

How to you keep and organize necessary “stuff”?  Let the other readers know in the comments!