Super Easy Playroom Organizing Tips

If you have kids, you most likely have a room that looks like this.  Yes, it seems crazy, but you also know kids love to make messes. This project was done with a client. She thought we were only going to work on this room in the two hours allotted for the session. Well, we ended up clearing out her family room too. Yes - two rooms in two hours! Here is how we made this playroom more organized for her two boys.  I hope you pick up some playroom organizing tips from our experience.  Here we go!

First, she showed me the two places that the kids were using for their toys - the family room and the living room.  We organized the family room and removed anything that she didn't want in there.  The kids took some of the toys in that room from the playroom.  The other misplaced items were from her husband, who temporarily brought the things into the family room.

The family room was a cozy place and was across from the kitchen, so she did not feel it was necessary to have all the toys in that room.  She wanted the family room to be a place to gather and play games as a family (there isn't even a TV in the room) and a place where the kids can play when she was cooking dinner.  We kept the kitchen playset, the kitchen playset accessories, and the board games in the room. To hide the bigger kitchen set and accessories, we moved the playing kitchen zone behind the large chair to hide it from company.  You cannot even see it from the kitchen at all.

"I can't believe we were able to organize two rooms today," she said over and over.

We then started working on the actual playroom.  We brought all the items that were not supposed to be in the family room into this room.  We repurposed the existing bins shown in the image above to minimize cost on supplies.

Her kids were at the age where she could get rid of any baby toys, so that helped a lot. After accumulating all the unwanted toys, we talked about the items donation plan.  She was going to have a yard sale, and if they didn't sell there, she was going to take them to a big consignment event in the area.  If she didn't go to the consignment event, she was going to bring them to a donation store in the area.  Keeping her focused, she marked down the dates of these events on her calendar. Having a Donating Plan B and, even, a Plan C in place helped keep her from not finishing the purging process when she could not do Plan A.

"Have a Plan B and a Plan C when donating your items!" ~ Sabrina Quairoli

Then, we went through each bin. Touching each item once, we created two areas.  "Consignment shop" bin held the things that were going to be sold or donated.  After we finished the sorting, we had three large consignment shop bins.  The "Trashbag" area was for broken and missing toy parts. We ended up with three bags of trash.  Sorry to say, none of it was recyclable. =(

This is the "After" picture!  "Where did we put the toys?" you may be wondering.

We stored all the larger toys in the center bin.  The smaller opening at the bottom we used for remote controls for cars and trucks.

The open bins to the left were for smaller cars and other smaller items.  We didn't feel it was necessary to label them because they were so few things in them that if the kids placed the items in the different bins, they would still be able to find them.

The Thomas The Train sets bin, and Lego Duplo binn were swapped out for larger containers. The balls were placed in the brown chest to the right, and the wicker bin on top stored the stuffed animals. We made sure to label all the containers so to help her family remember where the house the items.

What you can't see is there are two air vents on the left and right corners of the window so to allow air to come through, we placed items that were easy to move and lightweight so the air from the vents would be able to go through.

I hope this inspires you to get your playroom organized.  What do you think?  Please leave any questions in the comments section. If you need more help with organizing a playroom, here are some posts I wrote:

Five Creative Playroom Organization Articles

Creating Zones in an Organized Child Playroom

10 Toy Organizer Ideas

5 Games to Help Kids Understand How to Organize 

Here are some articles I found online about playroom organization.

Realistic Playroom Organization and Toy Storage Ideas

15 Organization Ideas to Make Your Playroom Adult-Friendly

Amazon has some adorable toys and storage bins for kids, check these out.  Click on them if you wish to buy.  (I receive a referral fee for these purchases.)