Storage solutions?

A few months back I was looking at storage options, but I'm still stuck... For now all their toys are in two large soft bins, and the result is that they don't play with most of them, and the little pieces of toys are lost at the bottom etc... so they can't play with the shape sorters etc. I bought one of those plastic drawers units, which I love for diapers etc, but it ended up with everything dumped on the floor and the kids sitting in the drawers.

I can't find anything that would keep the toys together but that they wouldn't be able to dump. Can't really afford Ikea's storage right now, and we don't really have anywhere to put much furniture (they climb on everything and there isn't any safe place where we could put them pretty much). I don't want to spend a fortune, and I was thinking of just getting some boxes of different sizes and take the boxes out a few at a time every day so everything would stay together, but I don't even know where I could find those...

Any suggestions?

 

I hear ya! My dh redid they playroom closet and I bought storage bins for the toys-and organized them all. When I get some free time, I'll take a photo for you. I got the bins at Target-$3.99/ea.

 

I bought some things today but I have that sneaky feeling that they will just dump everything...

 

Still need to take a photo....

But-I used to have a fabric bin of toys in the living room-and then all those little toys went to the very bottom and they would just dump the toys on the ground. Well-I got rid of that fabric bin. I organized most of those small toys into bins-cars, balls, blocks, crayons, markers, etc. Then, I take out one or two bins and bring them into the living room and they play with them for a few days. And then bring them back into the closet and get new toys out. There is actually less mess in the living room now!

 

Yeah it's what I want to do eventually, just need room to store all the stuff they're not playing with and it's lacking right now.

 

i just have a bunch of rubber bins. and i keep all the shape sorters in one bin, books in (2) bins, kitchen stuff in a bin, music stuff in a bin, etc. then i take one or two bins out at a time, and as soon as i see they're done playing, i put it all back together (with a little of their help), cuz i can't stand pieces missing to toys!

and every few weeks i'll go thru everythign and reorganize (cuz dh sucks at putting toys away)

 

We did go for the IKEA cube storage, but Target and Wal-Mart both have similar units that are much cheaper. Here's Target's. I think Lowe's and Home Depot have this stuff too. It's worked great for us. We did primary colored bins and separate the toys by blocks, balls, little people and animals, misc. Then the big stuff and books just sit in their cubes without bins. The place still gets trashed and they love to dump them, but if we try we do have decent luck containing them to dumping, refilling and dumping the same one

 

I almost got the cubes but I got one of those storage units with lots of bins. Actually a huge success, because they have a ball dumping the bins, stacking them, filling them etc. The place is obviously a mess afterwards but they get to play with little toys now too and I'll take the 5 minutes of clean up as long as it keeps them entertained.