This week we are going to organize kids’ playroom and toys. Playrooms can be one of the most challenging areas to keep clean and organized. But, if you efficiently declutter and mindfully organize your playroom it will be so much simpler to keep neat.
Bringing organization into this room is really a matter of only keeping items your kids play with and organizing them into a way that makes sense so that everything in the room has a place to go when they are finished playing with it, and everything is easy to put away. Just like with their bedrooms, you can get your kids involved in the clean-up of their space if you are both up for that.
If you don’t have playroom you can use this week to focus on another space of your house that is not covered in the challenge or that you still haven’t finished. Or, you can apply this challenge to any area where your kids’ toys are kept. In the first part of the challenge, we will walk you through the steps of organizing the playroom and toys. Next, we will take a deep dive into toy rotation and how this can help keep your playroom and toys organized. Let’s start organizing!
How to organize kids’ playrooms
- Start by pulling everything out from closets, drawers, cabinets, shelves.
Discard anything that has missing pieces, broken, pieces, or has just generally seen better days.
- Now, look at what you have left. Are your children grown out of any of these toys? Do they simply not play with certain things? Take these items out as well, donating or selling things that are in good shape and tossing the not so great stuff.
- Wipe down all or your surfaces, and vacuum or sweep your floors.
- Finally, organize what you have left after decluttering and replace them back in their spots in the room. Consider organizing the playroom in a specific way, such as by child, or in stations related to the activity. Creating these zones gives a nice flow to the playroom, and helps keep it organized because everyone, kids and adults, know where things are supposed to go when it is time to put them away.
The benefits of toys rotation
Now we are going to head into our deep dive part of the challenge and talk about toy rotation. We mentioned toy rotation in last week’s challenge when we organized the kids’ bedrooms and closets, and we will take a look at it in more detail today. There are many benefits to toy rotation: your kids feel that their toys are new again when you rotate the groups of toys out, kids’ play better and are more relaxed when there are fewer options and clutter surrounding them, and you can see what toys are still loved and used if you pay attention to what they play with. This way, you can get rid of toys that are no longer used and reduce clutter. Now let’s look at the actual process of toy rotation.
How to rotate toys while organizing kids’ playrooms
You’ll want to start toy rotation after you have completed step one of this challenge and decluttered and organized the toys.
- Make four tubs for each toy rotation. Label them, simply 1,2,3,4 is fine. This will help you keep track of what group was last rotated. Once a month is a good rate to rotate toys. Now, look at the zones in your playroom or toy area. Say you have an art area, an imaginary play area, an active play and building area, and a book and reading nook area. In each tub, place toys that will go in each of these areas.
- Now you should have four bins filled with items that go in each of your playroom zones. Store your totes in an attic or closet. Tip: start by leaving your kids’ current favorite toys out in your kids’ playroom. This way they will not feel like you have taken something away. When you rotate and bring our new toys, if there is one thing that they are still really into from the last rotation, leave it out and keep the other item that would replace it in the bin until next time.
- Create a rotation schedule for yourself and add it to your calendar. I like to rotate toys once a month, but you can also do it every three weeks or every other month. Try different lengths of time out and see what works best for your kids.
- At each rotation go through and clear off the shelves and empty bins and baskets. Wipe everything down. Then refill with items from the new rotation. Add the items you removed to that bin. Now the toys that were just out are now in the back of the line for rotation again.
Wrapping up
You did it! This week was a HUGE job, but really rewarding, don’t you think? Organizing kids’ playrooms and making them more functional can be so fulfilling because it really enhances the quality of play your kids are having.
I would love to see your before and after photos of this week’s challenge. Please share your pics with #
