Toy storage. Please help!

[sundaybest]

I'm on a hunt for a toy storage solution!
I've been looking at all sort of different things and was wondering what worked and didn't work for you MNers.
I like the look of a toy chest but don't like the fact that all toys are in one pile and it's impossible for the child to find/play with anything. I would like something a bit more organised where my dd could see what she's got and get everything out herself. Ideally it would have a shelf for books too.
Any ideas?

we use the IKEA expedit book case. comes in multiple sizes ans can have boxes in it. have two friends who also use them. DS has seperate boxes for cars, paints,balls, instruments. some of the shelves are used for toys and some for books. can't recomend them enough. we use natural and the wicker baskets but can get in white with bright colours, sounds weird but website really hard to see full range of boxes and colours, better to go instore to look if you can. Hope that helps.

A two door deep cupboard with shelves contains most of DS's toys in the living room. It can be shut so we don't see them once he's gone to bed. His books are in a reading corner with a kind of tent thing around it. He loves sitting in there with his books.

Thanks guys. I was looking at the IKEA book case as well. Will do some more digging online today.
cheers

We use expedit as well. They take books 3 deep as well. Brilliant. The clear plastic storage boxes also fit. We have 2 lots of 6x2 with 2x2 in top either side of our sideboard and ds1 has 6x2 with a 2x2 ontop in his room. We also use trofaat with sliding boxes in bedrooms and they have 10% off those ends 16th.

Argos do pine frames with 9,6 or 4 cubes that take standard coloured plastic crates.
Brilliant for younger children's toys (duplo, brio, happy street, soft toys etc)

Older DCs Lego, hot wheel cars and Playmobil needs something that takes smaller, shallower boxes and allows more subdivisions.
We just have a mixture of real shoeboxes and an ugly plastic set of draws.

We use trofast from ikea - you can shelves for it as well as the pull out drawers. We have two of the low wide units back to back so they double up as a playtable too.

I've just invested in some second hand kitchen units and am using those as cupboards in the play area bit. It's working a treat and worked out cheaper than ikea stuff. Look on eBay for one locally?

I also love ikea trofast, it's expensive but very sturdy!