Organization for SMALL bedroom

[TraciG]

we don't have a playroom, we live in a small apartment, so we have toy's everywhere, I joke that my apartment is a big playroom ! I can't stand Sydney's room, I have 3 rectangle shaped boxes , one has toy's over flowing & the other 2 are partially hidden behind the crib with stuffed animals that could pass as a mountain !!!!!!

Very soon we'll be getting Sydney a bed so no more hiding the animals, any idea's what I can do ???

[C99]

How small? My DS's room is 7x9 + a closet. We do have a dedicated playroom on the first floor, so most of his toys are kept down there, but he does have lots of books, which we keep in the lower 2 shelves of a small bookcase (the ROBIN from IKEA), along w/ some bins of toys in the upper 2 shelves of the bookcase. He has a twin-sized bed and we keep some things in 15" GLIS IKEA storage bins on casters underneath the bed.

I also go through and cull the toys (especially stuffed animals, which tend to multiply) on a regular basis.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Well, ds' room was big enough for a bed and a crib so the stuffed animals lived in the crib for years after he moved out of the crib. We considered a toy hammock for the ceiling or a perimeter of shelves around the ceiling where the animals could live but then they would be pretty inaccessible. You could hang a rope and have the animals live on that, clipped with a clip by their ear (I know they make a product for this but I'll have to think where and post the link when I find it). That way most of the toys would be accessible in the vertical storage.

I really do like the shelves I bought at Target and talked about on yesterday's playroom thread. They don't take up much foot space but offer a lot of storage.

Beth

[niccig]

Can you cull the toys? Go through and think about how many stuffed animals does she really need? I have to do this too. I have a large pop-up bin full of stuffed animals which NEVER get played with. I also need to go through and decide which toys can be donated to charity. When I rotated through our toys (1/4 out and the rest away in bins), DS played much longer with a particular toy and it was very easy to find pieces etc. I really need to do this again.

[squimp]

we have shelves with small baskets or trays, and that seems to work better than the big bottomless toy basket (although that can be a fast way to clean up). We try to find a place for everything, so she can put stuff back in it's place. I also let her help me cull toys every once in a while. And see if you can get some rolling drawers or some kind of underbed storage for her new bed.

[lmintzer]

Can you get a stuffed animal hammock? Or some kind of a storage unit for them? They are really the easy part. IKEA has some good stuffed animal storage:

http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=12&catalogId=10103&langId=-1&topcategoryId=15567&parentCats=15567*15661*16260&categoryId=16260&cattype=sub&pageNumber=2


Then, is there a wall you can use for a toy shelf? You can put the things she uses less on higher shelves or just rotate toys. You may need to make use of vertical space in a small room.

I know you are looking for beds. What about a bed with storage drawers underneath?

[TraciG]

I couldn't see the link, say's error, good idea about the bed, do you buy a certain bed that comes with storage underneath or do you do it on your own ?

[kusiakje]

We have virtually the same situation as you do. Very small city condominium with DD's toys throughout. I don't know exactly how you have things arranged when you say that you've got toys throughout, but we've actually been able to use a lot of our furniture to store DD's stuff. I just found myself trying to protect fragile things from little hands, and next thing I knew, I had open bookshelves, drawers, etc.

The things that helped the most were hanging up pictures that we had sitting on low-ish shelves and boxing up CDs, videos and books that we didn't really need to have easy access to anymore due to a lack of time and mp3 players. It's really not that big of a deal to pull out a crate or box of those things from the closet on one of the rare occasions when we want to watch a movie or whatever. And suddenly I had all these empty shelves, drawers and cupboards that, quite frankly, DD loved getting into anyway. (How she loves playing with CD and DVD cases...)

Who knows, maybe you've already put as much of your stuff away as you could. But just in case you hadn't thought about that, I thought I'd give you the flip side to getting rid of some of the toys, like some of the PPs suggested.

HTH,
Jessica
Mom to Katarina (DOB 9/16/05

[TraciG]

So hard for me to get rid of things ! I was going to throw away her little ride on toy that she got 2 years ago but she took it from the front door & put it back in her bedroom ! It's harder now that she's older & will remember what's missing !!!


In our family room we have 2 couches, a chair & the TV, it's one a small stand with DVD's inside, no room there ! Oh yeah we also have a toy chest & next to that the Dora kitchen, that took time getting used to ! We have the crayola easel, doll house & some other toy's in that room & a big ugly cat tree !

As soon as you walk into the apt, we have a small table with a mirror above it, under the table is a small box with instruments in it & next to that a little people airplane.

Can you picture my apt now with toy's all over !!! ??