Hey, so my sister Lisa came over last Tuesday and we were having coffee while the kids were supposed to be napping (they weren’t). She looked around my living room—which currently looks like a crayon and plastic crime scene—and just sighed. “How do they have more stuff than us? They’re tiny.” I laughed, but honestly, I get it.

You bring a baby home and it’s just this little person with a few onesies and a rattle. Fast forward three years and you’re conducting nightly searches for a specific blue plastic spoon from a tea set you didn’t even buy. Where does it all come from? Birthdays, grandparents, the mysterious toy-pileup fairy. It’s relentless.

So let’s get into it. I’m not an organization guru. My pantry is a mess. But I’ve figured out a few things about toy storage that work in the real world, where you have approximately seven minutes of nap time to clean.

First, the mindset shift that saved me

You’re not building a museum. You’re managing a supply depot for tiny, chaotic creatives.

Perfection is the enemy. If your system requires 12 different colored baskets and a label maker, you will quit by Thursday. Start simple.

Here’s what I actually do:

1. The “Play & Put Away” Zones

I stopped trying to contain toys to just their rooms. It was a losing battle. Instead, I put a single, decent-looking basket in every main room. In the living room, it’s for cars and little figures. In the kitchen, it’s for crayons and coloring books. In the hall, it’s for outdoor stuff like chalk and bubbles. When playtime happens there, cleanup means tossing it in the basket for that room. No grand journey back to the bedroom. It cuts the clean-up time in half. Those canvas bins from Target have been my workhorses for years now. They hide the mess but you can still just chuck stuff in them.

2. The Great Toy Purge (The Sneaky Way)

I don’t do big, dramatic clean-outs with the kids watching anymore. It’s a recipe for drama. Instead, I keep a medium-sized cardboard box in the bottom of my own closet. Throughout the week, when I see a toy that’s broken, missing parts, or hasn’t been touched in months, I quietly drop it in the box. When the box is full, I tape it shut. If no one asks for a single thing from that box in two weeks—and they never do—it goes straight to the donation center or the trash. No tears, no fights. It’s like magic.

3. Dealing with the “But I LOVE It!” Stuff

This is the hard part. The outgrown train table. The giant stuffed elephant from Uncle Joe. The baby toys you’re emotionally attached to. Your house has a physical limit. I learned this the hard way when my garage became an impassable jungle of baby gear and preschool art.

This is going to sound odd, but it was a game-changer for us: we got a small storage unit. Seriously.

I was so resistant at first. It felt so…extreme. Like, “Who am I, a storage unit person?” But then I realized, I am a storage unit person. I’m a person who wants to keep her daughter’s first-year birthday outfit but doesn’t want it mildewing in a garage box. I’m a person who knows my son will want his wooden train set for his own kids one day, but I need my basement back now.

So we did it. We got a small, climate-controlled unit from 3D Self Storage. One Saturday, my husband and I packed up all the “someday” and “sentimental” items. We didn’t just shove them in garbage bags. We got proper plastic bins, labeled them clearly (“Infant Clothes,” “Thomas the Tank Engine Tracks,” “Kindergarten Art”), and stacked them neatly.

The mental load that lifted was unbelievable. It wasn’t just physical space. It was the guilt-free knowledge that the memories were preserved perfectly, but not under my feet. The baby clothes are safe from humidity. The artwork is flat and protected. And my house is for living in again, not just storing the past.

The Bottom Line

Your daily toy chaos needs a simple, forgiving system. Baskets, bins, and stealth purges. But your sentimental chaos—the weight of all those precious years—sometimes needs a bigger solution. And that’s okay. Giving those items a proper, protected home off-site isn’t giving up. It’s making a choice to be present in the messy, beautiful now, without erasing the past.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I just stepped on a Playmobil pirate. Wish me luck.