I’ll admit, I love to browse Pinterest. It is fun to not only find new ideas to try, but also to dream about what my house could look like. It seems like some people have their entire house ready for photographs at any moment. So when I first started to reorganize Mac’s toy closet, I had half a thought to try to make it picture perfect. After that half second of madness, I stopped myself because toy storage doesn’t have to be pretty! It just has to be functional. So here is a not Pinterest perfect example of toy storage (where toys live when they aren’t in the toy rotation.)

Here is what it looked like before. You might think “Okay Mikki, you’ve said before that you are a minimalist when it comes to kid stuff. This looks like a lot.” Well:

1. The top shelf is full of board games and the bottom is full of storage for Andrew and I.
2. This toy closet includes toys for Mac until she is 5 years old and beyond. This closet includes non-board books, harder and bigger puzzles, craft kits, and educational games and materials for when she is far older than she is now. I have it all in one spot so I can track where she is at and what I have for the future.

I had good intentions when I put her toys in the closet, but when things got busy and push came to shove, I just started pushing things anywhere they fit. At this point, I was ordering things by category, meaning all of the books were together and all of the puzzles were together. This quickly became overwhelming when I was trying to look for a specific item within those categories. So one Sunday, while Mac and Andrew were on their weekly grocery run (which is an awesome weekly adventure they have together) I took all of the toys out of here and rearranged.

So here is the after. Not something most would publish on Pinterest, right? But it is sooooo much more functional for me to rotate out Mac’s toys. I know exactly where everything is now. Let me give you a close up view.

As you can see, the books and puzzle are now spread into different areas of the shelves. Now let me throw some labels on there for you so you have some idea what you are looking at.

This time, I organized by topic. Sometimes when I put out a week’s toys, I decide to do a theme like farm animals or trains. With this organization, I can find things to fit my themes quickly.

Now, is this pretty? No, I’m sure it looks like a mess to some people. And that is okay because honestly, my closets and storage don’t need to look good enough for a magazine. I have the smaller items in labeled tubs so they are all kept together.

So tell me, what does your toy storage look like?