Toy Storage - Mainly Playmobil

[Beccatheboo]

It was DS1's 4th birthday just before Christmas and he and DS2 (10 months) were on Santa's good list. Between them, thanks to many kind rellies, they have accumulated a mountain of toys that we have no idea where to put.

My main concern is where to store Playmobil - as my FIL put it, DS1 is going for the record of the world's single biggest residential collection! As well as numerous figures with a plethora of hats, weapons etc, he also has pyramid, rock castle, Roman ship and pirate ship. My husband thinks a tool box would be good for accessories, but where will the big items live, other than on the floor? They are too large to store in plastic boxes.

Can anyone please give any tips on toy storage?! We live in a cosy 3-bed house that will shortly be sinking due to its contents!

Would the large ikea trofast boxes be large enough?

42 x 35 x 30cm approx?

Other than that very deep shelving in the bedroom.

We have a large Ikea PAX wardrobe, with KOMPLEMENT boxes and shelves in. But then we do seem to have more playmobil than is sane - quite a lot of stuff passed down from cousins plus 3 x birthdays and christmas for several years.

I put 3 tall ikea billy bookcases between the boys' bunkbed and the wall, and all big playmobil is kept on the shelves. The rest is in ikea trofast boxes.

DD has her dolls house on a trofast chest, with the bits in the boxes undernetha or in a shoebox.

I don't bother keeping the sets separate. It's part of the fun to find a binman sitting on the toilet or BBQ man serving up at a pirate vs spaceman battle.

my other thought was a wardrobe with shelves we've got a lot of large toys stored very neatly away in one of those!

Thanks peeps! Am about to check out the Ikea website (the problem is our nearest store is 2 hours away). I think it's a Trofast storage unit we have tucked up in the corner of his bedroom - I think it could be better utilised though. Good thinking about the wardrobe, just need to clean out the old clothes and paintings that are there with nowhere else to go. (The top of his chest-of-drawers is already taken up with the Playmobil Colosseum.) Our house is like one of those sliding puzzles, where there's one tile missing; we free up a 'tile', only for one to be filled elsewhere!

The boys are so lucky to have nice toys to play with. My husband and I feel a bit scrooge-like because we always moan about the amount of stuff at Christms. Much as we 'blame' the rellies, we also have a toy addiction. In my mind I keep thinking we could get the use out of them by having another baby (very broody at the mo), but at this rate any new addition would have to sleep in the garage! I dread to think what the loft's like with things being saved 'just in case'...

we've got 4 dc in a small open plan 3 bed house. You do need to be very very ruthless if they don't play with stuff either put it away if they are too young for it or sell it.

Good storage is the other key. You need to utilise the height of the rooms with floor to ceiling storage, under bed storage etc.

I store all our boys toys in big plastic containers which stack really nicely on top of one another. Obviously for the bigger Playmobil pieces, eg we have a castle, once they've been painstakingly put together (by either myself or my OH) you don't want to break them up again!! So we've got particularly large plastic boxes for those that get stored in the attic and then brought out when required by the boys.