You have probably seen our schoolroom toy organization from our past homeschool room posts. Every summer I go through our toys and reorganize, purge, and make new labels to get things back in order.
My purpose in toy organization is keeping things simple for kids to clean up easily and independently. I like the open drawer system and the labels for this. My kids have always cleaned up independently because of this system. It was an upfront expense for the Trofast system from Ikea that we use {not sure our exact towers are still for sale, we have 4 tall towers hooked together}, but so worth it for many reasons. It is by far my favorite method and has worked for us very well for years.
This year I needed to add some toys into the system and I didn’t add space! Since we are no longer doing our All By Myself Preschool Boxes, I wanted to come up with a new way to store the baggies of learning toys I had created, making them easy for Ladybug to see and tell me what she wants to play with. I wanted to get everything in one space, which until now, it was not. Until now, I kept most learning toys in the Trofast system, but the rest were stored in our storage room and a bit harder to get to. I grabbed all of our baggies of learning toys from the storage room, sorted them and purged a bunch, then made a plan for what I wanted to keep and have accessible.
I used the same method of using pictures on labels but made some bins with multiple toys separated by baggies. This helped me save space but still have things easy for the kids to get to. They are zipper top baggies so the kids can easily open and close them
Now, all learning toys are in one place, since I added clear boxes {got them from Costco} on top of our Trofast system.
The most used items are in the system below, and the others are in the bins on top.
She can easily see the large graphic labels and ask me to get the bin she wants down. Asking me isn’t exactly ideal, but with the labels she can see and I can jump up and grab a bin for her. Until now these toys were thrown in bins that only I accessed to create All By Myself Preschool Boxes for her. She loves that she can see them all now!
Yes, we have a lot of learning toys. This always comes up and here’s the basic answers to common questions. We have a lot for many reasons ~ I was a teacher and came into motherhood with some, the grandparents graciously buy learning toys for birthdays/Christmas, we have many blog review items in our stash {we have kept favorites and donated others}, and we shopped consignment sales. Why do we keep so much? Honestly, I hope to use it in the future possibly teaching a group of kids either in a co-op or in my home. Once my kids are older, I know for certain I will feel lost without tots and preschoolers to hang out with. I have not passed on many quality learning toys because I hope to use them with others one day!
Want to see what we have? Here’s a {very informal} video tour, showing what’s in the boxes. Question about a specific item, just leave a comment and I will direct you! I couldn’t remember exact names while making the video no matter how hard I tried!
Feeling discouraged because you are short on space or finances? We have not always had this yet somehow I always made a system of easy to get to – easy to clean up work for us. Here’s a post sharing how we stored our learning toys in baggies in a wagon in our tiny schoolroom! Baggies are a lifesaver for space. You can even hang them up, here’s an example of that. Heavier items obviously won’t hang, but many of our items would! Find a method that works for your budget, your space, and your personality. It may not be ideal, but you CAN make something work!
Want Some Toy Storage Labels?
I can’t share the exact labels I made since I used many images straight from a Google image search. But you can make your own! I use PowerPoint, so that’s what I am showing below. If you use a different program to design, maybe some of the tips may help. Using Word is not the easiest method, so if you have PowerPoint or Publisher, it’s much easier.
Hopefully these graphics will help walk you through the process of making some basic labels. The tutorial doesn’t include fancy stuff, like the background, but you can play around and add things yourself!
Want the tutorial in pdf form? Download it here!
