Where do you keep their toys?

We have a one and a half story house with three bedrooms. One being ours, one for the boys and one for the baby. Currently we keep a basket of the majority of their toys in the living room. Some of their toys are kept upstairs in a toy box but they don't really play up there because they can't be left alone and it's just not very often that we play in their bedroom.

The boys are in this phase of dumping out the entire basket of toys which then ends up all over the place. And currently we're having issues with TO (see my other post, LOL .. not funny :headbang so that's really not effective for this issue. The dumping of the toys is driving my DH bonkers while me it doesn't really bother too much. I do see it becoming a problem for when the baby starts to crawl but hopefully this phase will be done by then.

We have a small pantry that we're considering keeping their toys but the doors to the room are western style and I can just here them running through the doors a million times and not to mention that I have shelves of food in there (I can contain them to the top two shelves which are out of reach). This room was off limits prior to this idea.

So for those of you with bi-level houses and the kids' room upstairs ... where do you keep your toys? Any ideas or suggestions?? Thanks!

 

Wow one basket of toys. Sounds like paradise lol.

We use soft storage bins in the living room for stuffed animals, dolls and bigger toys, (there's an area behind one of the couches for them) and bins on shelves in the family room for toys with parts. I've found that sorting toys by type in smaller bins helps for cleaning up, as long as you make sure they put it away when they're done. We have one of those shelves units with bins but it's put away for now and we just use the bins.

 

Our house is only one level, but the toys still lived mostly in the living room until the girls were at least 3. They never played in their room anyway, though I did store things there that weren't in active use.

At some point in the past year or two, I made a decision to move stuff to their room, but lots of things are still all over the living room. We just try to make them clean it up every couple of days. (The Magna Tiles and Polly Pockets have lived in the living room since Christmas -- they get used every day -- though I do make the kids at least put them in their storage containers at bedtime.)

 

We have a playroom and most of the toys are in there. But there are some toys in their bedroom and they are in the soft storage bins on the floor and in the closet.
We also have a play kitchen in our living room and a wooden toy box. The playroom has a storage system from Ikea and everything gets put away once a day and once a week I make a point to go through the bins and sort them out.

We have a lot of toys but during the winter when they can't go outside as much, it's a must.

 

Do you have a dinning room area? Our house is small and our front room is L-shaped that includes a "dinning area"...that is now the playroom/area. Its nice because I still have an adult area and the kids area is just a few steps away and large enough for a foam letter flooring with baskets of toys...our dinning room table has been replaced with their small table and chairs! They have a bedroom but its too small and only houses books and a doll house.

 

One basket of toys?! Wow!!! I'm so jealous!

We have a two story house and we utilize most of it. When the girls start getting cranky we switch to a different room and it always does the trick. so, we keep half of their toys in their room upstairs and half in the playroom downstairs. It always wore them out to go up and down the stairs all day. Toy storage in the common areas are a no-no here (hey, adults live here too!) We have a couple storage units in their playroom and bedroom with soft storage bins. Also, I bought some cheap toy boxes at Ikea that double as benches.

 

A lot of the toys are kept on bookshelves. Like you might see in a classroom. I even bought a classroom style bookcase that is deeper to house some of their toys. I cleared out a couple small bookshevles or use the bottom part of a bookcase. We have tons and tons of bookcases though because my husband and I are both very avid readers. I'm not a fan of toy boxes. They end up dumping everything out or not playing with the toys that end up on the bottom.

For some toys I do have clear plastic storage boxes (plastic animals, duplo blocks, PCV pipe that is cut for them to build with, etc.) so they can easily see what is in the box.

 

We have a one level home with the bedrooms on the main level. We do have a basement so thats where the majority of the toys are. I do have one nice sized wicker basket in the living room for toys and I try and switch out the toys in there about every 2-3 weeks. I don't allow a lot of toys in that basket but at the end of the 2-3 weeks, there seems to be a whole lot more thanks to my oldest who brings things up from the basement and doesn't take the toys back. This Wednesday when the kids are in parents day out, I will switch toys around.

I think it's normal at this age to dump out the basket of toys. My two do it all the time. It just gets cleaned back up before nap and before daddy comes home. Thats why I only keep a certain amount of toys in there so it becomes easier to clean up. Also, I find my kids play better with the toys when there aren't so many toys so you have the right idea on just one basket of toys. Maybe take some of the toys out, put it away for a while and switch out so the toys become "new" again.

 

We keep about half of our girls toys in their bedroom and the other half in a small playroom that's off our living room. Their play kitchen and two shelves of toys are in the playroom, but most of those toys migrate out to the living room because the girls would rather play where we are. We pick those up daily and put them back in the playroom. In their bedroom we have a large shelf from IKEA with plastic bins for toys. Even at almost 4 years old, they make a huge mess with toys. They don't dump bins out for the sake of dumping them anymore, but they certainly leave things all over the place, and don't pick up one set of toys before moving on to the next. (we're working on that!)

Edited to add: we also do toy rotation at my house. About 1/3 of their toys are in our barn at any point in time. Just yesterday I moved all cars, trains, 1/2 their books, and all stuffed animals out of the house. That leaves Legos, art supplies, dress up, play kitchen, dolls, 1/2 the books, and puzzles in the house (plus assorted other things). In a few months I'll pack up Legos and dress up and bring the cars and trains back in. This probably sounds a bit severe, but I found that my kids just didn't play with all of the toys they had, and if I made some disappear for a month or so, they were excited all over again when those toys reappeared.

 

Most of their toys are downstairs in their playroom. They have some toys on the main level that we keep in a couple baskets and they have hardly any toys in their room since they would be up all night playing with them.

Our house is quite small so I do periodically go through and recycle or donate toys that they no longer play with.