Toy Storage Help

[LittleTwiglet]

My nearly 3 year old has so many toys that a toy box (ottoman box from Dunelm) just isnt working anymore, she can never see what she's got as its all thrown in, but i don't know what to do to organise it.
She has her play kitchen in the dining room with all the food bits etc kept there, along with her hoover.
But everything else is in the living room, piling up in and by her box. Toys like dolls and clothes, cars, building blocks, figurines, shapesorter, mcdonalds toys, abacus, big cars and trucks, and other random stuff.
We dont have a massive space available, and she doesn't play in her bedroom as it's upstairs and she prefers to be with me, can anyone offer any suggestions/photos of what they do for it all before I trip and/or stub my toe for the millionth time!

Most of our stuff is in the living room.

So in there we have toy kitchen which I put stuff away every night. Toy shopping trolley which is useful to put stuff in. Duplo I have a small fabric box I put it all in every eve. There's a larger fabric boys for random toys. His woody dolly sits on the kitchen every night. I'll attach some pics

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We just have fabric boxes and baskets and all the small parts stuff can just get chucked into those at the end of the day. Makes tidying up a breeze!

I have a cheap cardboard box from card factory that I store all the puzzles in and that goes in my room

Puzzles we keep in see-through plastic ziplock bags and just cut out the picture from the front of the box and stick it in the bag with the pieces. Saves so much space and much easier to store.

Could you rotate the toys around so not all of them are downstairs or some are hidden away if necessary

The fabric boxes are a good idea, i like the idea I can move them with me as I pick everything up.

I'm not sure about rotating things as she likes to play with different things all the time, and she hasn't really grown out of anything just yet. I also thing if I put them in her bedroom that she will just end up playing instead of sleeping 😒

That ziplock idea is brilliant! We have a pile of boxes on the bookcase that make it look so messy, and she can't reach them on her own.

Yes, I saw it on a blog and thought it was such a good idea! DD loves puzzles but the boxes were a disaster to store and she couldn't easily access them herself.

We use these:

Snopake A4 Plus Zippa-Bag ‘S’ Classic with Write-On Label [Pack of 5] 370 x 260 mm – Transparent/Assorted Zip Strips [Ref: 12814] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002FKLO6M/ref=cmswwrcppapiglttfabc9W5KQ5ZZ1SB2TZ11CCK7??encoding=UTF8&psc=1

And keep them in a big basket so she can help herself.

It was the bane of my life for years. We tried every method and nothing ever hid it all (apart from closing the playroom door).
I used to curse all .y furniture for having an underneath as bits of toys inevitably congregated underneath everything and needed fishing out.
I got a large bedding box from a junk shop and painted it. That was ok.
And some big fabric sacks with initials on - soft storage holds odd shapes.

It goes soon enough though. And then you just have tiny boxes with even tinier chips in that cost a gazillion pounds!

I like these cotton storage baskets from H&M:

www2.hm.com/en_gb/productpage.0974175001.html

I'll order some of them bags now! Thank you!

Ah don't say that! I do miss my tidy organised house without finding stake cheerios and odd toy bits absolutely everywhere, the washing machine bugs me the boast for random bits appearing!

We have an Idea trofast unit with different sized trays so everything is organised and can just be thrown back in.

Ours is in the hallway and currently has paper/pens trays, Barbie box, Random box, Lego box and Shopkins box but it's also held toy cars, wooden trainset and musical instruments so it's pretty versatile!

We have a long ottoman but it’s the bottom of the bed type on legs, so isn’t too deep for stuff to get buried. Within that each ‘category’ has smaller soft baskets. But we don’t have much of each ie brio he has just the basic figure of 8 so far, so it fits in small basket
Similar to this www.anthropologie.com/shop/freya-storage-ottoman

We also have a round lowish basket from Ikea that stores duplo and fits nice under chair in living room when not in use. IKEA has various baskets with or without lids that might fit under sofa or side tables

Honestly though, I do cull already. My mum found way too much duplo for £10 at flea market. I just sorted though and kept 1/4, out 1/4 in loft to bring out and change over or add too over time, and donated the other 1/2 as I simply don’t have space to have huge sets of everything.

I think the trick to not loose stuff is smaller, shallow baskets. Anything too big and a 3 year old will just tip the whole lot out

I swear we didn't have much via way of storage when I was a kid, but cannot for the life of me remember where all my stuff used to be kept (as a child not a toddler lol)

I know it's not exactly what you asked, but maybe declutter and reduce the number of toys? There are some good videos about this eg Minimal Mom. In reality if you have a lot of toys, no storage solution is going to keep it under control for long (unless you are fantastically disciplined). And kids genuinely will be just as happy (and probably more) with less.

Btw, hope that didn't sound too patronising. Mine are sightly older now and I wish I'd been more ruthless at the time in getting rid of toys (or at least rotating), even ones they used sometimes. In hindsight, they would have been just as happy with half the amount of play food, two matchbox cars and not twenty, etc, etc, and I'd have saved myself a lot of frustration.

@rhubarb84 you didn't sound patronising at all! To be honest I don't even know where to start with decluttering kids stuff (I have a nearly 3 year old and a 7 month old). DH is also a slight hoarder which i put down to him having hardly any things when he was younger.

Also I've just figured out how to tag people 🙄

[quote LittleTwiglet]@rhubarb84 you didn't sound patronising at all! To be honest I don't even know where to start with decluttering kids stuff (I have a nearly 3 year old and a 7 month old). DH is also a slight hoarder which i put down to him having hardly any things when he was younger.[/quote]
I'd definitely suggest looking at the Minimal Mom on YouTube and searching her channel for 'Toys' - there are quite a few about decluttering them, storage etc.

I think I partly struggle as I keep thinking that the youngest will play with my toddlers old toys, but then he's shown no interest in her old baby toys, just the new stuff that's been brought for him.