Children's Storage Ideas

As soon as you are pregnant, your house started to be over run by baby stuff. Once your child is older, or you have several children, it can be hard to find enough room to put down your cup of tea! The constant picking stuff up or feeling of chaos from 'stuff everywhere' is definitely one of the things which stress modern day parents out!!   In earlier generations children didn't have lots of toys, so the 'stuff' issue was not such a problem....but almost every parent we know struggles with keeping things tidy and finding places to put everything.

Here's a few tips we have gathered to help you contain the bedroom and living area chaos at your place!

General rules for sanity

• Do not have all toys out at once!!!! Keep some put away in cupboards, in the garage or wardrobes so you are dealing with a bit of chaos not a huge chaos!

• Spring clean your toys and books! Children's tastes change, they grow out of things or just never play with certain things. Can you recycle, donate to a charity shop or local gala, list them on TradeMe or Ebay? Why struggle to find room for things your children don't even want!

• Do your spring cleaning without your children present. They will want to veto all decisions and may even want to go through the rubbish bag to retrieve most of what you have thrown out (speaking from personal experience!). Do it while they are asleep or out of the house, trust me!

• Keep your toys organised! A huge mixed up toy box or many random piles of toys are hard to keep tidy and don't invite easy play set-ups. We suggest plastic crates or plastic boxes with lids, such as Duplo, wooden blocks, train set and accessories, musical instruments, cars etc. Then you can get out the 'cars' and play with those for a while and put away the train set box for a week or two.

• Storage needs change over time...e.g. the storage you need for a mountain of lego is quite different to bulky dolls or trucks. Reviewing what you keep toys in needs to be reviewed as you do your spring cleaning!

Bedrooms

• Shelving is your friend! Cubes with plastic or fabric boxes are ideal for keeping lots of little things contained and makig it easy for children to put their own things away.

• Under-the-bed drawers are fantastic or a cheaper option is big flat plastic boxes that slide under the bed, ideal for lego or out of season clothing.

• Is there space up high in the wardrobe you can put things away in for a while?

• Have your children grown out of clothing or toys that are cluttering the place up?

• Fit in as much storage as you can, such as cubes with coloured baskets or plastic tubs on the floor. These elements can keep your room under control and use affordable elements to add to your colour theme.

Living rooms

• Keep your living room as a living room. Have a couple of boxes or baskets in the lounge and keep the rest of your children's things in their room or packed away to rotate.

• Choose storage which fits with the decor in your lounge, rather than having your children's choices in your living area. So once the cars are packed away in the nice matching basket under the coffee table you will feel more serenity than if there was a bright pink plastic tub in the middle of your lounge.

• What stuff can be out in a bedroom, play room, shelving in the hallway, put up high or in storage in the garage??? Be ruthless!

• Have a family routine of tidying up every evening before or after dinner. In our house children don't get dessert if the place is a mess and they won't help with tidying up!