Storage Ideas

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I'm useless at organising the kids toys, but this weekend I found a great wicker laundry basket (large) calico lined with lid for £8.99 at Dunelm Mill. Great for toys. Any other good ideas for keeping things tidy and gentle on the eye as opposed to the bright toy boxes?

I once saw on tv a really neat way to make storage bins out of old wooden see through crates. You just stack them anyway you wish with the open parts facing you and drill holes to attach them together. Then you can paint them any colors you want. Now the only problem is trying to find those types of crates somewhere.

Bargain - Homebase has three seagrass trunks of descending sizes for £39.99 - down from £59.99. I've seen similar in catalogues for £39 each.

I know that they may not be very aesthetically pleasing, but I can honestly say that the bright coloured 'kids bins' I bought from Blooming Marvellous have been brilliant. Its a kind of wooden shelf with 12 red, blue and yellow boxes on it, you can store loads of bits in them - one for zoo animals, one for duplo etc and the joy is that you can take one out at a time, play with it then chuck it all back in and put it back. Dp took a lot of persuading (if its not Farrow and Ball/Homes and Gardens he's not interested), but even he agrees that its great for keeping things tidy. I have a seagrass box for books in the living room but all it takes is a few minutes with a toddler + digestive biscuit to become pretty tatty looking.

The storage system is about £60 but I really think its worth it. We used to chuck everything in a nice old wooden trunk, but its a real pain to fish bits of coloured plastic out of the bottom when you need them.

Tea chests!

You can normally buy them fairly cheaply (often in the small ads under removals - got ours for £1 each). Shelves inside made of ply or MDF supported on thin batons. Stack and screw together (no more than 2 high but as wide as you want) and then paint all over. Can add a bit of beading to the front edges if you want to tidy them up (and cover rough edges).

Did it myself in under an hour and cost under a tenner including paint

wooden wine boxes! I saw a pile of them in the yard of our off licence and asked the owner if he would sell them to me. He gave me 6 for free. As well as making stand alone toy boxes, stacked up they make a great shelf unit.

I have several wicker baskets from IKEA (Basant, I think) and they are great. Two in the lounge, one for toys, one for nappies etc, one in the bathroom for nappies, one in kitchen for toys, and they also fit right under our bed for clothes, books etc.

Because I'm short on space I tend to rely on bags for toy storage - bought a little coat rack from Ikea and put it at child height, and I've made lots of pretty coloured bags with felt letters appliqued on to them to tell me what (should) be inside. It works quite well for things like lego and train sets, but I can feel a bag labelled 'small unidentified plastic things' on the way. For certain things it works really well, and takes up lots less space than boxes. Plus, is easy for child to get out and tidy away!