Decorative Toy Storage for the House without a Playroom
Our 1,800 sqf Cape Cod is a comfortable size for our family of 5, but the one thing it does lack in these child-rearing days is a designated play room. In a huge sense, I actually see this as a very good thing. Knowing my habits and motivation level, if we had a separate playroom, it would just be trashed all the time with legos, colored pencils, and miscellaneous kid debris… and I would just shut the door and pretend it’s not there. Out of sight, out of mind.
However, because the kid’s playroom is our living room, we need to stay on top of their toy messes if we want to have any enjoyable, clutter-free adult areas to relax. We also need to be creative about where we store things!
I knew from the outset that I wanted to find ways to conceal kid stuff while still having the room look decorated and intentional, so I tried to utilize a lot of the decor and furniture I already had in here. Basically if there’s a free receptacle or empty cubbie hole in this room, it can hold kid stuff!
And thankfully, most of their toys are small objects (manipulatives, craft supplies, stuffed animals), so they’re fairly easy to cram into various bins and baskets. When they get larger toys, like a play kitchen or a giant stuffed bear, I often have them store those things in their large shared bedroom.
But in case you’re looking at our living room and wondering where everything goes, I thought I’d show you.
All of the round baskets underneath and inside of our TV console cabinet are for small toy and book storage (you can see how haphazardly we throw things in there – see what I mean about laziness when there’s a door? lol).
These baskets hold their wooden blocks, their animal figurines, and just other random odds and ends that they squirrel away as toys. I like this solution, but any time there are baskets and preschoolers, things are going to get DUMPED! Dumping the toys makes for a very laborious clean up session later, but hey, such is life.
This wooden chest is good for their bigger toy items that wouldn’t fit into small baskets (stuffed toys, collapsible strollers, doll house, etc).
Somehow I’m able to shove all of my daughters’ dress-up clothes into this tiny basket that then fits perfectly beneath my record cabinet here. Those fluffy dresses compress well!
And then finally, my blue hutch is basically mom-above and kids-below. All the drawers inside my beloved bookcase here are filled with various kid toys. Each drawer has a designation or some kind of toy grouping inside it (art supplies, musical toys, legos, play-dough, etc.), which helps things stay organized and feel sane.
And that’s our setup for now! As the kiddos continue to accumulate bigger play items that won’t fit in their bedroom, we’ll have to think about branching out into some spare rooms or (hopefully) a finished basement (someday!).
But this works for now, and it also helps me to keep the toy volume at a manageable level. They honestly can’t play with everything they own already (which is A LOT), so anytime there’s a new influx of toys after holidays or birthdays, I have to purge and donate just to make everything fit. So that’s another way that small spaces can actually force good habits.
