Taming the Toys Part I

My mom was telling me just the other day what an organizational genius I am.  I told her that was funny because my  husband was just telling me how chaotic our house seemed.  Somewhere between my organizational genius and our chaotic house there must be a breakdown. Or maybe that's just life in a house with 8 chaos makers people.

Some members of the family are more adept at spreading chaos than others. 

I can't remember where I saw this, but at the time I thought what a great idea!  I found pictures of our most common toy categories online and printed them out with our color printer.  I also wrote the name of the toy under the pictures for the upstairs, but not for Lucie's room (she can't read). 

I had them laminated then used velcro adhesive to stick them to the toy baskets.  This way I can change labels from basket to basket if I want or even remove a label and add a different one. 

Lucie's toy chaos

We threw away a few things and gave away about a bag of toys and books.

I know it's still too much stuf for this little room, but at least it's organized now.  And I'm happy to report that Lucie now knows what she has and where everything goes.  (The blue basket on the bottom shelf is for miscellaneous toys and I didn't want to confuse her with a picture.)

Tomorrow we hope to tackle the upstairs playroom.  I think we have 12 baskets of toys up there.