attempt number 472 to contain the kid crap

Gah! Toys, toys, everywhere toys! If you are like most parents of small children, you have approximately 11 billion toys and no where to put them. It's nearly impossible to contain them.  I have come up with a few strategies though, and here they are;

• Limit what you allow people to give.  *Warning Grandparents hate this one!* Our daughter never had a play kitchen, her own tepee or anything bigger than she was. She was not scarred by this, I promise. We live in a 1200 square foot house, we just don't have room for that.
• Edit constantly and liberally.  Although our daughter plays with all her toys, she is hardly ever really attached to anything.  She's a spoiled child of the 21st century... she knows more is on the way.  If you are really struggling with this one, you can always edit and keep them in the garage for say, a month.  If the children don't look for anything in the donation pile, out it goes with no guilt.
• Remember, it's your house! You are the one that goes to work to pay for it.  YOU get to dictate how it looks, not the kids.  

So over the 7 years we've had this kiddo, I've tried a bunch of "solutions" that haven't really worked.  Most are just plain old too small or not sturdy enough.   Most of the pictures you see of "toy storage" involve about 3 stuffed animals, some balls, some blocks and an olde timey train. Yeah right.

 

If that was the extent of our toys a lot of things would work.  It's like those pictures of closet organization where the person has three pairs of pants, five shirts, and two purses.  Totally disconnected from real life! Plus, if you are doing any sort of storage in say, the living room, it's still all out in the open.  And again, if our toys looked like the toys above, no problem, in real life though there is at least 3 shades of neon plastic, ponies with hair that will never be straight again, and at a minimum 20 books that have been read to tatters.

So what's our solution? The best thing I've ever found is a giant wicker trunk.  What I like best is that I can just throw everything in it and close the lid.  Outta sight, outta mind.

Open

Closed

The kitty gets to stay out because she's so cute and I don't mind having a few toys lying about. We DO have a child living with us and it's totally fine with me that she's represented by a few things, but the bulk needs to go away when she hits the hay.   Best part about the basket we have now, is that it was only $30 on sale at Cost Plus. So it it gets destroyed at some point, oh well.  If not, it'll be great at storage for other things as the daughter gets older and we have fewer and fewer toys.