A graphic of a tidy and organised children's bedroom with toys all stored away
Episode 73 – Toys (Part 3) organising and storage

In part 3 of this 3 part podcast, we discuss organsing and storing toys. Organising toys is a vital part of sorting out a playroom. There are so many storage solutions but finding the right one is never easy, so in this podcast we discuss some of the options.
Prefer to read rather than listen?
Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter hub podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen, and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:31  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 73 of the declutter hub Podcast. I'm Ingrid and I'm Lesley. Now before we start with the main part of the podcast, I would like to remind you of a few bits we've got going on with the declutter hub at the moment. We are so excited because we're starting a new challenge. Next Wednesday, the 26th of February. It's a 40 days 40 items challenge and we absolutely love it. And we are going to declutter one or more items per day from our homes. And it's all taking place over in the Facebook group, the declutter hub community. So come over and take a look and see whether you can be inspired to join us and declutter some items as well. If you have more than 40 items to tackle, come and have a look at our members area where we guide you with step by step online courses through each area of your home. We have live q&a sessions, challenges, quick wins, and of course, our community chat, you can find us on members dot declutter hub.com. Now in today's episode, Lesley and I are talking about toys. And this is part three of a three part series all about toys. In part one, we spoke about decision making and honesty about toys, and in part two about categorising and decluttering toys. This week, we're going to talk about organising, storing, and donating toys, Lesley, three whole podcasts about toys.

Lesley  1:59  
I know it's still colossal, isn't it, it still feels colossal even in part three is still quite quite the job isn't it to manage toys, which is why it has taken us all three podcasts to talk about it. So it's just such a huge job really. But we have done the difficult part of it. We've done the thinking we've we've looked at our emotions and habits, which is the most critical parts of things. We've looked at why we are keeping ties beyond their usefulness to us or our children, we have decluttered, effectively, we thought about the categories of toys that we're going to use. So hopefully our toys are now in a good state that we can actually start putting them away. So what is the best way to actually store toys? Well, it's going to very much depend on the space that you have got, isn't it. So for some people, they have a designated place in their homes where they can store toys, lucky you, other people it's in, it's somewhere in the living room or in living areas of your home. For other people, all the toys are kept in the children's bedrooms. And so it very much depends. And so the type of space that you've gotten, the amount of space you've got, is very much going to dictate the type of storage that's going to work for you. But boxes are going to be our friends. So I think we're going to talk a little bit about what types of boxes are going to work.

Ingrid  3:13  
Yes, for sure. I mean, containerization is definitely I think the key to go. And boxes can be really super helpful. And boxes can have a lid or don't need a lid. But it depends on how you store them. So for example, if you have a small space, and you need to store different boxes on top of each other, and maybe pull out one box so that children can play with one certain type of toys, and tidied away with the box lid back on and put it away and get something else that he did stack them on top of each other. You're going to need boxes with lids. But if you have Calix units from Ikea, for example, then you can have boxes that don't necessarily have lids, and they can easily get the toys out and put them easily back in Word and finished playing with them. So depends really on what kind of books you need as well, and what kind of plays you have, isn't it? Lesley?

Lesley  4:04  
Yeah, definitely. I think the important thing to remember is that we talk all the time about barriers, don't we? So the whole idea of organising and storage thing is that tidy up at the end of a play session is easy. Well, I say easy. It's easier to say. And and so what we don't want is we don't want any barriers to stand in the way of us or our children putting things away and often lead some boxes, or if you have to start moving boxes, one on top of the other to put things away. That is a definite barrier. And so what that makes us do then is think, Well, I haven't got time to do that at the moment. I'm just gonna put it there and I'll put it back later. So what we need to do is we really need to make it nice and easy for children to work with the storage and the boxes that we've got. So ideally, if you can we need a bespoke piece of furniture. We've talked about a collection and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. So that that barrier is taken way, ideally, we don't want boxes that stack one on top of the other because we have to lift those boxes down. But sometimes we don't have a choice. You know, we don't always have choices on what we have when we have to make the best of the situation. Now, you talked about Calix unit, which we obviously both of us love. And so you may not know it as a Calix unit. But what it is, is one of those square storage units from Ikea comes in different colours. And what they have in them is they have almost like cubes that replicate drawers. So they're kind of I think they're 30 or 30 centimetres by 30 centimetres, something like that, England, I've got that right there very useful storage and work brilliantly in a play room because it's nice and simple. So Calix unit is absolutely fantastic. Their comment sections of 248 16 and 25. So if you can get a 25, cube Calix unit into your play room, then you're going to be pretty much sorted aren't you? i

Ingrid  5:59  
I've never been lucky enough to have a separate play room. But I've worked in with different clients that have a collect unit. And it's really, really helpful. And also in a previous podcast, we spoke about categorising, and that's where it gets really handy, because actually, every square and Kalex unit can be assigned to a certain category. And that's what's really helpful when either you or when your kids are older can then put stuff back. So that's really helpful.

Lesley  6:29  
Yeah, definitely, I mean, if you can fit a 25 unit Calix unit in your space, even if you don't utilise all of the boxes for toys, it's really, really worthwhile because you can have smaller amounts of things in each separate compartment. And it just makes it makes it easier for the kids to find things and then to put things away as well. So a Kalex unit is absolutely fantastic.

Ingrid  6:50  
Now, let's see, I know I have a love for a California dish roll. But actually, I don't have one in my house. But what I do have is to Trofast from IKEA. And that's where you've got the little drawer system, and you've got the rails that you put the little drawers in and out. There are lists available for those plastic boxes, but I don't have any lights in my house, I just use the open boxes. And you've got, I think in three different sizes, very small to a bit larger to very deep. So that is for me in my house, the perfect system to use for Toy categorization and storage and containerizing. So that works really well.

Lesley  7:27  
Yeah, you know, IKEA is such a brilliant place to go for storage, I mean, I use Kalex units all over the house, you know, not just for toys, because it looks quite nice, quite neat. You can do different things, you can make it look more expensive, it can be cheap, you can label it. So it really really is very, very versatile storage, as is the Trofast unit. But really, the key is to try and maximise on the space that you've got. So if you can go vertical on your toe space go vertical, if you can go higher up the wall, don't leave any space on us, because you need as much as you can possibly get, particularly if you've got more than one child. So boxes, ideally without lids if possible to aid tidy up. But that's not always possible. And so sometimes you need to stack one box on top of the others. And that's going to probably mean that you need to intervene more as a parent in terms of organising their play.

Ingrid  8:19  
And I think one other thing that I wanted to say about the Kelex you can also use the without storage boxes. So they're also really nice if you need to put away board games or puzzles, or books. And you don't need to have a specifically a box when it's more like Lego or Duplo or Barbies that are really helpful to have in a in a box together. I mean for my daughter's Barbie stuff, I had a three drawer plastic shelving units, and one of them had all the clothes and the other one had all the extra bits and bobs for the Barbie house and the other one had some other bits. So that way we categorise for those that didn't have room for a collection, unfortunately. So that's why I tried to find a middle ground for the space that I could use,

Lesley  9:05  
oh, I think I could fit a Calix in somewhere in your house and I would find a spot for it. I'm sure that you've got some space in there that you could sneak warning. Anyway. So the other thing I wanted to say about a callback. So this is, you know, my love of a Kalex unit is the same as Ingrid's love for paperwork, I think I love my cat, anybody who's worked with me as like, Oh, she's going on about a Kalex units again. But it's because it's just so versatile. And actually, it's quite cost effective. You can get there everywhere. Most houses have got a Kallax in there somewhere. So you can get them secondhand as well if you're tight on budget. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that the top of the Kalex unit is also really useful for putting bigger items on. So a Kallax is going to restrict the bigger toys that you've got in your house. It's you know, it's really more for rummaging through smaller items. But you can put bigger things like medium sized garages and smaller doll's houses and things like that. You can put those on top of the calyx unit as well so that gives Do a little bit of extra space,

Ingrid  10:01  
then. And what I also wanted to talk about is that sometimes we can think let's just get the largest box possible. But sometimes having a massive box isn't always the right way to go. I think a large box works well for large items, but not if you've got a lot of small items. So are you the same way about that? Literally?

Lesley  10:25  
Yeah, definitely. Because this, if you've got a large box and smaller items, they get lost. And it's very hard to find you don't have a line of sight on them, you don't have that visibility, and then that impedes on your accessibility in that box. So I would rather have two boxes that stack and are labelled effectively than one large box, because it's going to be better for the child. And it's going to be better for the tidy up and so on. So that's where you have to sort of think about what's going to work well for you. And sometimes you do have to go for bespoke storage that's going to work effectively for you. Sometimes the boxes, you know, if we do have LEDs, there are LEDs that just almost like rest on the box and don't clip on the clips, so they can be good as well, because you can get them off much more easily. The other option is that you can get stackable boxes that stack nicely without lids as well. We take away the fact that we've got to take the lid off, and we don't take away the fact that we've got to lift the box down, but we do take the lid away. So the important message here is, think about your own behaviours. Think about the way that a lid is a mental barrier for you to put in something away. That's what we're trying to get across. Really, isn't it Ingrid?

Ingrid  11:36  
Yeah, for sure. And I think as well connected to that is if you're categorising, don't overdo it. So you don't want to make it so small that you then have to rummage to four different small boxes to find what you're looking for. So if you've have got some Lego, or you've got some Duplo, you probably don't want to categorise it by colour if you've only got one or two sets, but here in this house, I've got a child who's absolutely Lego mad, he absolutely loves this stuff. So we actually bought in the end, it's kind of like a plastic shelving unit on wheels with different coloured trays in there or different coloured drawers. And we actually ended up categorising the Lego in different colours, because we didn't want to put it set by set because some sets are much larger than others and it didn't work. So we decided because we've got so much Lego, we have to subcategorize the Lego in colour. But if you've only got one Playmobil sets, or one or two LEGO sets, just get one box and put it all in.

Lesley  12:45  
I think the important message there really is that sub categorization is good in some instances where it's needed, but it also creates a system that you then need to maintain. So the important thing here in grid is that Max is older, so he's a little bit older, so he can put stuff away himself for sure. And you're also meticulous about organising, so you will do some tidying up as well. But don't create a system that's so complex, that it's too difficult for you to manage, because you'll fail before you've started. So create a system where it's broadly categorised, you know, of course toy rooms and play rooms get messy and that categorization is not going to stay like that for very long. But as long as you've got broadly, you've got things categorised together, mostly, it's fine for it just to be good enough, isn't it? I hear

Ingrid  13:33  
you. I mean, of course, if kids started playing toy rooms, and then everything and they and they like to create their own versions, you know, they suddenly go, I'm not gonna play with a Lego. I'm also get the doors from the dose house because that those are perfect people to live in my Legos city, and you're like, it was only category but they love their own imaginative play. And that's where it gets muddled. And but I think that's part of playing and learning, especially when they're smaller. And I think you see, when children are getting a bit older, they actually start to play more than one category. But when they're younger, they love pulling, they suddenly get the cars from the garage into the lego city they're building, and then it all gets muddled. So that's when you need to stay on top of it a little bit. And I think, for me, I'm quite relaxed about that. Unless it's like a board game or a puzzle. I'm really like, right, you've done it. Let's put that away as a whole. Now, you've played the game, you might have even finished it, okay, let's leave it out. But when you finish it tomorrow, it needs to be put away. Because if those kinds of bits get muddled into kind of the norm of the day to day playing, then you have everything confused.

Lesley  14:46  
Yeah, and probably to be fair, Kraft stuff as well. Probably needs to go away at the end of play as well. But yeah, I'm with you know, you need to allow children's space to breathe and play. But you can't let it get so muddled that it becomes come completely chaotic again. So we've talked a little bit about boxes. And one of the things that we talked about bigger boxes and smaller boxes and the Trofast and the Kalex that we're talking about, and there are lots of other storage options out there as well. That's medium size storage. So are there any categories that we mentioned in the last podcast that will work well, with much larger boxes, Ingrid?

Ingrid  15:22  
Yes, I think dressing up stuff works really well in a larger box. Because they have different costumes, you don't want to put them all separately, they, they do combine a pirate eye with a princess outfit or a one to when they're when they're firemen, you know, so it doesn't really matter. As long as all the dressing up is together, I will say put that either in. If you've got a blanket box, or a big tub, or a large box with a lid, those kinds of things I think can lift together really, really well.

Lesley  15:53  
Definitely, I mean, you talk about tubs and I mean, I call them trucks, I think that's the name. But you know, those big round open boxes that have got a bit of flexibility can pick them up, they often have handles. So I've always had, you know, I've had toys and cupboards, my children, so my children's toys, were never in a play room, they were always in their bedroom. But they did have a decent amount of space for them to be in there. But the trucks definitely worked really well for bigger items and things like that. And there's definitely having some flexibility in a box really works as well. That's why the Kalex unit with the see my love of Kalex coming out again, with this sort of flexible canvas, sort of like Canvas type draws aren't the only about three pounds, they're not making money, either finessing about the colour axis, you can do it reasonably cost effective way. But the trucks got flexible sizes, it's easy sometimes and having rigid sides as well. So that really makes a difference. And then you can match those trucks to your decor as well. So you can buy pink ones, purple ones, bright colours, reds, greens, blacks, whatever you want. And so you can actually match it in with the decor of your child's room as well, which is great. I think you can get them personalised now as well. I mean, there's so many fantastic things. So we're not talking about a specific toy solution. And apart from the kulaks, obviously, and the Trofast. But what we're talking about more is thinking about the idea about the size of box, the flexibility of the box, and the barriers that you create by using specific boxes or not. Yeah, I know

Ingrid  17:18  
exactly what you mean, actually, because when the children were really young, and all the toys were really hard plastic, and really big and chunky, I had three orange tubs that were really soft with the handles, we can carry them around and very easily kind of put away and it was open so the kids could just put it in. And it was easy. So we didn't have all the bulky stuff to try and cram into a drawer that was too small. So the tops were really well.

Lesley  17:45  
I think the rule really for toys is divide and conquer you need to divide categorise, and then you can conquer them. So really think think about that when you're trying to just sort out a system for your children. I think one of the problems is that we look at things like Pinterest and Instagram. And of course these toy systems looks so so beautiful, but they take a lot of maintaining. So sometimes it just needs to be good enough.

Ingrid  18:10  
Yeah, and I wanted to add to that because you talked about this reminded me that for example, for stationery and pencils and pens and colouring pens, shoebox is a perfect solution. You can either have a one shoe box where all the kind of drawing stuff is in together. Or if you get a bit more you can kind of say okay, these are the colouring pens and these are the pencils with some erasers and with a sharpener and then you can kind of divide it out immediately. So it doesn't always have to be super fancy storage a shoebox can be really perfect as well.

Lesley  18:44  
shoebox is perfect and shoebox lids are perfect as well as our containers that you get from takeaways you have your Chinese in and stuff like that. They're brilliant because they've just about fit a pen and things like that can be great as well. If you want to categorise a little bit further down, particularly things like stationery or tiny little things, you know that people have little tops on pencils or little Peppa Pig toys or, you know, sometimes we get really, really tiny things, don't we? What are those things called?

Ingrid  19:08  
I don't know, the first thing when it comes into mind is like shoes for Barbies.

Lesley  19:12  
Yeah, she's

Ingrid  19:15  
all the little accessories in the brushes in there.

Lesley  19:18  
And the problem is if they're not in a box, they're just gonna sit at the bottom of a larger box and get lost. And so sometimes you do need these little containers for accessories then cards as well. You know these another use to show my age and I was Pokemon cards. What are the current cards that kids are playing with at the moment?

Ingrid  19:35  
Yeah, there's loads now. I mean, we used to only have one kind of cards, but now they've got cards from Lego, they've got cards for football, they do whole teams. I had no idea I was talking to different guards until I recently did a house with a cat two boys and I saw them all. And that exactly. So the question is then Lesley labelling. Let's talk about labelling then it's critical, critical.

Lesley  19:59  
It is critical. It's is absolutely critical. And it's really important to get your children into good habits right from the start. So people say, Well, I've told my child to go up and tidy his room. And he just never does that. And that's because he hasn't got a clue what he's doing. He's like, Oh, what like my, my rooms are complete tip, how am I going to tidy that up. So we need to create some systems that they can work within and labels is definitely going to work for a child, depending on the age of the child is going to determine what kind of label you're going to use. Obviously, the younger the child, you might use me to use bigger font if they can read or you might need to use pictures, but it's really useful to show them look, this is your domain, these toes. And this is where these things go so that they can actually do them. And then, you know, because only then can you say, but you know where they go because there's a picture on there. And it's really obvious, and you can get them involved in things like that. So labelling is absolutely critical. We love a label, don't we?

Ingrid  20:53  
Oh, yes, yes. And I've actually worked with a daughter of a client of mine. And she actually got hold of my label maker. And may I mean, of course, she could read and write. But she made the labels herself. And that was the, you know, to get her motivated into decluttering. And organising, was to say, here's my label maker, you go for it. And she made all the labels herself. And that really helped in keeping her organised because she thought about the system. So that was really, really nice. But yeah, we'd love to lay a label. And it doesn't have to be like a beautiful label from a label maker, it can be a white sticker with a sharpie, or you can go, I'm going to print it off the computer, I'm going to laminate it, I'm going to stick it on, you can make it as easy or as difficult for yourself as you want. But whatever you do, stick a label on because it will definitely help you with the returning of items and not only in the playroom all over your house.

Lesley  21:47  
And if you've got something that's not rigid, and that you want to put a label on, you can use parcel labels that you can tie on as well. So often, if you use wicker baskets, and things use those, and you can buy really beautiful labels as well, which always look great as well. There's a lot of decal type stickers as well, on the internet, you know, I think Mrs. hinge and things like that, you can see that standard font decal that people use a lot of the moments, they're very popular, it makes you feel good, doesn't it because it feels organised. So it's important, aesthetically, it's important for the psychology and your mind are feeling organised. And it's important to demonstrate a system to other people, you know, we create the system, you know, you're listening to this podcast, so presumably you're gonna be the one that creates a system. But certainly in a toy room under other areas of your home, there are going to be lots of other people that are involved in the tidy up, whether that be a partner, whether it be other children, if you're lucky enough to have someone helping at home a cleaner, or the people that are potentially going to be involved in the tidy up. And so really think about making it clear where things go. Yeah, it can be

Ingrid  22:51  
anybody can be a nanny, it can be a grandparent, it can be a babysitter. If everybody knows and a label almost forces people need to go Oh, and you can also say to them, Listen, I've labelled my house. So it makes sense where everything goes, if you're unsure a rabbit that you leave it to the side. So I can either put it away or show you next time where it goes, then just randomly put it somewhere and go go back to a cluttered state again. So that's why it's so important. That's exactly what we do with our clients. When we help them declutter and organise their homes at the end of the session, we walk through and go, right, this is where we put this here this year, this year, and we put labels so people then think, oh, yeah, that's true. And we can find it back.

Lesley  23:33  
You only have to look at what happens at playgroups. You know, kids are going to play groups at two years old. And they are putting things away themselves at the end of sessions, because it's very clearly defined where things live. And it's also very clearly defined, that tidy up needs to happen. And so he needs to try and emulate that at home, particularly this little living room, you might not want to label on there because it doesn't look as aesthetically nice. But you can hide labels, you can put labels on the inside of things, you can put things slightly underneath. So don't always need to be completely visible. Obviously, if you want your children to use a system, perhaps they do. But you know, even even in kitchen cupboards and things people that struggle, we can label on the insides of cupboards and things like that. So don't think that these labels always need to be completely visible from the outside. But labelling is really critical. And if there's one thing that my clients love, it's when the label maker comes out. And that's a job that I often give to them because they love making the labels and like oh, I love the labels I can guarantee by the next time ago, they will have bought a label maker because they're not expensive or they're they're like 25 pounds or something like that for the label maker. And then but it's the tape that tends to be expensive, but they can really make or break your organisation particularly with children. Now we've

Ingrid  24:48  
got some other good bits and bobs about storage that we wanted to share with you and the kind of organising principles and one of the things I thought was really good to tell everybody if you have board games, a lot of board games consists of a lot of small and tiny pieces. Use a freezer bag to put those in. So you can kind of put them in there together, you can zip lock it or Ziploc bag, you don't have all the pieces flying everywhere. So that is one of my top tips and for the car for like Monopoly cards or Monopoly money or cars in the board games, just an elastic band just really helps to keep things together. So I wanted really wanted to share that tip with with our listeners.

Lesley  25:32  
I mean, talking about board games and jigsaws, and things like that. The other thing that can be revolutionary, is that the corners of boxes quite often ripped out so the corners rip have sellotape to hand and just reinforce it with some sellotape at the corners. So the box B then becomes a box that is going to close. How often do we see those Jigsaw boxes and board games that are kind of wayward and the left falls off because the box is not contained, probably because it's ripped at the corners. So have a sellotape and sell it at the box inside and outside and it'll reinforce it. And then you don't have that problem anymore.

Ingrid  26:06  
And the other thing I actually recently created as well is that, especially with Lego you get all the little booklets, and that's where you can see how the original set was supposed to be built. A lot of times I've seen those booklets within the Lego but they rip quite easily. So have a box file or drawer somewhere or shoebox, where you can put all of those booklets in together. If you have a lot of those booklets, you might want to do one books file for just Lego manuals and the other one for other bits and bobs. And if you've got an expensive piece of electronic equipment for the children, you might even want to staple your receipt on the manual. So you've got everything together, and then have a second kudos in the second box file. So instead of having them loose everywhere, kind of start containerized in them as well. I think one

Lesley  26:55  
of the things that's really important as well is to be mindful of the volumes of things that you've got. So as we mentioned before, there are some aesthetically beautiful toys solutions out there for storage. But sometimes it's more that they are aesthetically beautiful rather than practical. And so sometimes we really need to focus on the practical, particularly if it's volumes of stuff that we're trying to store. So we can't always have something that looks amazing, we have to have something that stores the amount of volumes that we've got in hot homes, and one that I see quite regularly is those kind of I don't even know what to call this kind of like book storage things with elastic across the front of them. So they're really quite cute. They're like the kind of things that they will have in schools as well as the building schools, they'll have both, so they'll have some within the elastic on the front. So where you can see the front cover of the book facing forwards, I wonder what like there must be called sort of display bookcases or something like that. But the problem with those is that you can't store the volumes that you can when you're putting things side by side on a bookcase. So sometimes it's more important for you to maybe get a couple of books out that you want your child to read and put them somewhere they can see, but still have those bookcases where you've got the volumes of books, you know, kids have a lot of books. And so we need to be able to store them. And so a bookcase is much more practical storage than those beautiful display bookcases. If you've got a space, go for it, not a problem. But if you're tight on space, ditch the aesthetically beautiful and go for the practical. You know,

Ingrid  28:25  
I'm shaking my head like you can't see this listeners. But I'm shaking my head like yes, Lesley. Yes. Because I have

Lesley  28:32  
noticed you not.

Ingrid  28:35  
I'm sorry, I'm nodding my head going yes, this is true. Because I actually did a toy room sword with a client of mine. And she actually with an interior designer designed loads of cupboards. And he actually did quite well. But what he did, he actually created a part like next to chimney breast, it was like a perfect space for a bookcase. And what they did is they put wooden bars in so you can actually display the books with the front facing forwards. They have four kids and hundreds of books. And I'm like, this system is not working. I mean, other shelving worked really, really well. But I wasn't involved with the design, because otherwise I would have picked it up immediately and gone. That's not going to work. So Indiana took all the wooden bars out. And I think it now houses plastic cars. But I mean, it doesn't even House books because we decided that the books were all going to live up in the bedrooms, and actually not in the toy room because that's the one place that weren't reading was in the toy room because it was too noisy. There was too much going on.

Lesley  29:35  
I mean, that leads me on to really think about I worked for a client once where she was repurposing a large wardrobe for toe storage. And what we had originally was it was like it was just hanging space for a wardrobe. And so she had the boxes stacked as we mentioned within the wardrobe, which was fantastic. But again, those barriers were there. So I'm like why don't we get a handyman round? Let's put a few more shells in and then we don't have those barriers. We can put open boxes underneath and we can really make maximise on the space. So if you've got something that you need to repurpose, like a wardrobe that you think actually I don't need it for clothes anymore, I'd much rather use it for toys. Even if it's only temporary, don't be scared of getting a handyman round to put some more shells in for you. It's not expensive, they can do them out of MDF. What I did when I was making my children's wardrobes upstairs, because they were sort of bespoke storage that had then I had rails in the top of them, which I knew that I didn't need now. And I had removable shells that would move with them as they grew, and that I could use for toys sometimes. And then I could change it up. And I could use it for clothes when the clothes start to become more than the toys. And you know, when that is when they become teenagers, the clothes start to be there in bigger volumes and the taser. And so, you know, look at the space that you've got and repurpose that space, put some shelves and you know, if it's not working, why is it not working? What can we do differently? You know, you can spend sort of 50 to 100 pounds on a handyman and solve all your problems.

Ingrid  30:57  
Yeah, that's definitely true. And I was also thinking, if you're thinking about storage of your toys, think about where the children are going to play with it. So I would always have puzzles next to a table or close to a table. So if you have a cupboard next to your dining room table that's now being used for stuff you use once a year. But the kids love putting out a puzzle or playing a board game as a family get those things that you'd only use once a year out and put the board games and puzzles in that cupboard. Because then it makes it much easier for them to pull it out and actually play with it.

Lesley  31:32  
The other thing that's really important is to set the same principle language, where are people going to use things, things like electronics, iPads, tablets, phones, little game by type things, that's probably not what the call is now, but you know, I mean, there's little portable game things, what other called game consoles, gaming, yeah, game consoles, you know, sometimes we need to keep those, we need to definitely keep those safe and more secure, perhaps and other things. So quite often, it's good to have a drawer maybe next to their bed or something where you keep all those electronics together. And also the wires and the charging cables that go along with them.

Ingrid  32:06  
Another thing I would say if you have at the toy room, keep some wall space empty. So if you do get adults house or a garage, or a pram, they need to be on the wall somewhere, you can't have them in the middle of the room, they probably want to pull them out to the middle to play. But then they have to go back to sidewalls. So don't cram so much storage in that you can't house any of that kind of stuff, either.

Lesley  32:33  
I've got one last thing that I want to say about toys, and it's quite critical. And I feel strongly about this, I'm going to say Beware the table, the play table, you know, those big tables that look again, look amazing, and you really want them to work, you know, they quite often have got things that you can play games on, or they've got roads or train tracks or something. What happens on those tables is that kids just pile stuff on top of them and never use them as a table. So you may have a child that uses those tables, but really think carefully about whether that table justifies the space that it's taken up. And whether it's been used for the purpose that you intended it for. You know, it's hard because these things are really expensive, and sometimes they don't work. And it's hard to let go of them. But you know, sometimes when I'm working with clients, I say, are they actually using it? No, it's just becomes a dumping ground exactly the same as a chair in a bedroom. Same principle, if it's not working for the purpose that is intended to be aesthetically beautiful, and for the children to play on it, ditch it and send it to somewhere else.

Ingrid  33:38  
Absolutely perfect. Lesley I think a perfect close to this three part series about toys. I've absolutely loved talking about toys with you because I think I really enjoy decluttering and organising and categorising and labelling toys so for me, it gives me a lot of happiness when I see a tour room this kind of which is if it's all kind of chaotic and you can kind of find everything back into categories makes me really really happy. So I've thoroughly enjoyed it. But don't worry listeners we will now next week go back to talking about other things that toys Aloma we really hope that you've enjoyed this toy series. Is there anything else Lesley that you would like to add? Or shall I close off this episode?

Lesley  34:21  
I think that's I think that's fine. I mean, I've enjoyed it too. I've grown into it. As I said at the beginning, I'm not really a big tight room declutter fan if I'm honest, because something is quite hard work. Not that I'm shy of hard work. I hasten to add. There's a lot of principles within this that you can apply to other types of clutter as well. You know, thinking about the boxes, thinking about the barriers, the emotional connections with stuff the categorization, the labelling, if you don't have any children at home and you don't have to worry about toys. Just think about some of the other organising principles that we've spoken about.

Ingrid  34:52  
So listeners, are you going to tackle your toy room? We'd love to hear from you in Our declutter our community Facebook group and keep tell us and maybe show us with pictures what you're up to. We really appreciate you listening. And if you've got any feedback for us, I want to share and leave a review. Please do so we read everything. If you'd like to get more tips and advice, please follow us on social media. We are on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook is at declutter hub. And like I said, we've got the lovely supportive Facebook group community called the declutter community. We'd love to see you there and take a look@members.declutter.com To find out more about our membership. So thanks so much for listening and see you soon.

Outro  35:40  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the declutter hub podcast. Check out declutterhub.com for more inspiration, don't forget to tune in next week.
Subscribe now so you don't miss an episode
Listen on
Apple Podcasts
Listen on
Amazon Music
Listen on
Spotify
Watch on
YouTube
Prefer to watch rather than listen? Watch on YouTube