Organization 2011: Move the Toys

One catalyst for organizational change in 2011 was accepting the fact that we are going to be in this too-small townhome for another year or so. Another year and another baby. Oh me, oh my. I spent a few months wallowing in sorrow about this (or maybe I was mostly just wallowing about puking and gagging all the live-long day), but then at some point in December I decided to embrace it.

Initially, I decided that embracing our situation and our home was to embrace the fact that toys were going to spill over into our living room. When you have an active toddler and your play space at home is limited to two bedrooms (one of which is your own) and a open-plan kitchen/living/dining room, toys are going to be everywhere, right?

Except looking and dealing with the toy-splosion in the living room at the end of everyday was bringing me down. The photo below shows things after I halfway tidied it up one night. Blegh.I admitted to myself that it's just not in me to embrace that kind of chaos, so I looked into getting some toy-organization furniture for the living room. But that didn't seem like the best solution either, because our choices were to buy something cheap and maybe a little ugly to make-do for now (i.e. Ikea) or buy something nice that might not work in our new place (i.e. Pottery Barn Kids toys shelves). I didn't really like either option.

And then Husband suggested we make the first stair-landing a playroom. Hmmm...interesting idea. Ideal? Hell no. But good enough? Yes, for sure.  So I switched things around one day during naptime. I removed the plants and table from the landing and pulled together some random college-era furniture from other parts of the house to organize the toys and declared it a success.

I like that it's neat, clean, and out of my visual path at the end of the day. Bella likes that all her toys are in one place (To quote: "WOW! Play game!") and that her dancing space in the living room is now even bigger. We don't sit up on the landing all the time - we often bring some stuff down on a tray to the living room and then bring it back up again at the end of the day. Obviously it isn't going to be the kind of play area where I can just leave her there on her own, but our entire house doesn't really give us that option.

In the end, this is a good solution for us as we continue to make this space work for another year. I still can't wait for the day we have a more functional family home and can buy some larger toys, but for now I'm feeling okay about our situation.

And best of all, the living room remains clutter-free and relatively adult at the end of the day.
Relatively being the operative word, of course.