Organizing Revolution Challenge 4: The Kids' Room

The final week of the Organizing Revolution is the Playroom/Living Room.  Since the majority of the toys are in the kids' room, I decided to work in there.  My main goal for this challenge was to make sure every toy has a home, and that each one is easy for the kids to understand so the room stays neat and tidy.  We also just got an influx of toys for Christmas, so we were more than ready for a toy purge!  For those of you peeking over from the Organizing Revolution Challenge, here are my two boys, Jonah (age 3) and Matthew (age 1).  Aren't they cute?

Here is our old system before: We had a toy box where a bunch of toys got buried, and a blue basket for stuffed animals (which looks controlled, but half of the animals ended up in the beds or the toy box, so it's actually normally overflowing).  The chair and two push toys don't have a home.  

Here's the rest of the toy storage.  The cube shelves were stacked, but I ended up pulling the two top drawers out almost every day so my younger son could reach the top ones.  We also had a bunch of random stuff on top of the shelves, some of which needed to be put away.

After purging toys, we decided to get rid of the toy box, and moved the top cube drawers over under the window.  I also got rid of some stuffed animals, so what is in the basket, though full, is all of them.  I used a rubbermaid tub (without the lid) for the miscellaneous balls, and some wipes containers for smaller collections of toys, like the animals you can see in the picture below (click for the larger version).

The other two cube drawers stayed where they were, with a few more wipes containers and toys on top.  While cleaning, I managed to find almost all of our instruments, which had been disappearing one by one into the abyss of behind the shelves/under the beds.

The blue shelves are still working really well for all of the big trucks and Little People sets, so I left those mostly how they were.  We use ice cream buckets for different types of blocks, and the green bucket on top holds Play-Doh.  The only things that still don't really have a home are the 2 push toys.  As long as they're parked off to the side at the end of the day, I guess we'll call that a success.

Aside from the toy storage, the other area I wanted to improve in the kids' room was the top dresser drawers.  Right now they are just storing a lot of stuff that could be used elsewhere.  Ideally this is where I want to put clothes in the next size up for each kid, so I can see what I have and what I can look for a sale on.  Jonah's side before:

Jonah's side had cloth wipes, swim diapers, and underwear. Now after:

It still has the underwear (and the wipes, because I don't have a good spot for those yet), but now the bigger pajamas and shoes are in there too.  The swim diapers went to the closet with the rest of our diapers.  Apparently I will have to go shopping for this kid come summer.

Matthew's side had baby blankets and the wheels to his bed (one falls off, so we just took them all off so it stays flat). Before:

And after:

This side will generally be pretty full, because as soon as Jonah outgrows something, it's just going to head in here.  We have tons of pants and shorts, but hopefully Matthew doesn't grow too much above the waist, because the next size of shirts is what Jonah is currently wearing.  I like this system better than packing the clothes away in a tub just to pull them out again later.  I'll save the tubs for the clothes that are too small for both.

The blankets moved to a box in the hall linen closet to make use of some of the vertical space on the top shelf.  I'll pull them out again in May when Hannah comes.

This has been a really fun 4-week challenge for me.  I've organized several trouble spots in my house, and gotten rid of some of the clutter!