Tips for Keeping the Playroom from Turning into a Toy Jungle

It’s inevitable that when kids play there is a mess to clean up afterwards. If you have enough space in your house you can designate one room as a playroom which will help keep toys from invading the entire house. While it’s nice to have a playroom this can also present a problem – so many toys that they overtake the room and eventually leave no room for the kids to play. Here are few suggestions to help you tame the playroom mess and even how to get your kids to help.

The first step in bringing some sort of organization to your kid’s playroom is to go through everything. Anything that isn’t played with get rid of. Anything that you come across that is broken or missing pieces, throw away. You’ll probably also come across things that your kids have gotten too old for. You can either give these items away or put them in a garage sale. Now you can sort the toys by their type (games, stuffed animals, dolls, etc) and then figure out if you need to change the way you store them.

It’s important that you get your kids on board with keeping the playroom picked up. In classrooms you’ll find that everything is labeled, so borrow this idea and label everything. Make signs and attach them to containers and shelves. If your children aren’t old enough to read you can take magazines and cut out pictures to place on the shelves, etc. This helps your children have clear ideas of what goes where.

You’ll also need to keep the number of toys down to a minimum. Keep a certain amount of times out and pack away some. The ones that you decide to pack away, store them out of the way in a closet or basement. When you decide to swap out the toys it will almost seem like your kids are getting new things.

How you store the toys can also help. Keep in mind the age of your children. Small children will usually have a hard time with lids but you can find fabric containers that are not only soft but flexible as well which can be safer than hard plastic storage containers. If you have older kids, the clear plastic containers are nice because they can see what’s in there instead of having to dig through everything to see what all is in there.

Let’s talk about stuffed animals now. Anyone that has these in their house knows how quickly they multiply. If you don’t necessarily want to get rid of a bunch of them you can always use a stuffed animal net (hammock) that hangs up. Another option is a Velcro pole that stuffed animals stick to. This can fit in a corner and doesn’t take up too much space. Words of caution with the stuffed animal hammocks – use them with older children and have them at a height that doesn’t pose a choking hazard.

If you plan on keeping any kind of order in the playroom it’s imperative that you maintain it every day. Make sure your kids help you. A child is never too young to start being taught responsibility and how to pick things up and put them in their proper place. If you can try to get your kids in the habit of taking one thing out at a time and putting that back before getting something else out. This is usually pretty hard to do and if it proves to be hard then reduce the number of toys available. You can always increase the amount of toys in the playroom as they get used to this new system.