My two boys love building things, pretending to be things, arts and crafts, dancing and (often) wrestling on the floor), jigsaws and puzzles and just about everything else that young boys find riveting. While I’m thrilled they enjoy such a wide range of activities my problem has always been storage, as you can see!
Gradually the playroom has been reclaimed by the grown-ups as a dining room once more and the majority of the toys and games have moved upstairs to their bedrooms. While this is blissful for us when downstairs, tip-toeing around toys and walking over Lego in the middle of the night is becoming quite an issue. Extensive research (and bitter experience) has taught me the following:
Storage furniture doesn’t need to be ugly
In an effort to store toys properly I have mixed buckets, nets, boxes (with and without lids) and much, much more. In reality this half-hearted mixture has simply resulted in a collection of miss-matched and rather ugly dumping areas for toys, teddies and more.
If you have a look at the Great Little Trading Co. toy storage page you’ll see that there are a number of ways in which toys, games and everything else may be stored safely and allow easy access while still looking fantastic.
Plastic boxes have their place
A boy’s bedroom or a playroom is not the right place for plastic boxes (well not in my house anymore!). Boxes will quickly be emptied all over the floor to be used as pirate ships, cars or turned over to become stepping stones. We nearly learned a lesson the hard way as Taylor did just this; climbed up on a box to jump on the next one and put his foot through it as the plastic cracked! Fortunately he was wearing slippers else he’d have cut himself.
Storage solutions need to be versatile
Taylor used to be into teddies, now he is into Duplo. Kieran used to be into cars and now has hundreds and thousands of itsy bitsy Lego pieces scattered all over his room. Children grow and their interests change, as do their storage needs. Buying lots of smaller storage cubes, boxes with lids and what not is quickly going to prove futile whereas a piece of furniture with open storage or larger pull out sections are much more versatile.
I am not the only parent who has wrung her hands in frustration over a lack of decent toy storage. I doubt I am the only one fed up of seeing toys all mixed up so that finding everything needed for a specific game or play session is difficult. I wish, going back that I had invested in good quality, long-lasting and versatile toy storage from the beginning rather than constantly moving, replacing and tidying miscellaneous gaudy plastic buckets, bags and cheap and nasty boxes.
So, my advice for today…. Research toy storage options properly and don’t be fooled into thinking that cheap and cheerful always wins the day, it doesn’t!