This $100 Storage Closet Makeover Comes with Brilliant Organizing Tips

Every parent knows that cleaning up toys is a struggle, but the right organizing system can help make it easier.

Leanna Laming, the author of the blog Life by Leanna and a mom of three, acknowledges that her family’s toy closet (above) was better looking than many, but it wasn’t working for her family. Leanne realized there was room for improvement. In particular, while toy types were arranged by bin, those bins were completely opaque and didn’t have labels. Kids and parents couldn’t see what was where. “I wanted a play closet where my kids could easily find the toy that they were looking for,” Leanna writes. “It was also important to me to label each bin so they could help put toys away in the right places.”

Over the course of four or five hours, Leanna removed everything from the closet, then sorted the toys into “garbage,” “donate,” and “keep” piles. She organized the “keep” toys by category (blocks, cars, and so on). Only once she’d edited down the pile did she hit the stores, where she purchased a boatload of storage bins for roughly $100. “I made sure to get lids for small toys that could be choking hazards or that would easily get misplaced,” she writes. Another addition: labels, which help get toys back into the correct bin at the end of playtime.

Leanna and her little ones are such fans of the result. “I love that my kids can see their toys! They are also now playing with toys that they forgot they had,” she writes. A bonus: Leanna says she rotates which bins are on which shelves so her kids can access different toys by themselves.

Leanna’s advice to anyone else tackling toy organization: “Involve your kids when selecting which toys to donate to others who are less fortunate,” she writes. “It is a great way to teach them about donating to those in need!”

This post originally ran on Apartment Therapy. See it there: Before and After: This $100 Storage Closet Makeover Comes with So Many Organization Lessons