How to Store Kids Toys Without A Playroom
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Summer days are here which means more time for kids to be at home, looking for activities to keep them entertained when they aren’t at camp or playing with friends. Organizing stuff for kids can be a real challenge, especially if you don’t have a designated space such as a playroom to contain all the various toys, games, and miscellaneous stuff that comes with children. When we were designing our home, we knew we wanted to maximize every square foot and plan for both our short term and long term needs. This meant thinking differently about how we could use and evolve our spaces over time.
Thankfully there are many creative options to allow for discreet ways to store toys and activities for kids of all ages throughout your home without having a playroom or feeling like your home is being overrun with kids stuff. If you are looking for some new ideas or wanting to upgrade your current space with improved storage solutions, this series of posts is for you!
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Built-In Cabinets
Today I am going to share how we leveraged our built-in cabinets in the basement to create a zone for a variety of kids supplies such as arts, crafts, legos and more! This space is used daily and is versatile to meet the needs of both adults and kids.
Built-In cabinets are an easy to way to store and conceal smaller items. When we designed our home, we knew we wanted to have a basement bar and seating area to host family and friends. Rather than a full set of cabinets, we modified the design to have open shelving in the middle for an open bar area surrounded by cabinets to allow for better storage. If you are fortunate to have built-in cabinets, explore this option for how it can be repurposed to help you store various items for kids supplies. You won’t always need to use the space this way but when you are in the middle of raising children, it’s a great option to maximize space without needing to have a dedicated playroom.
Cabinet Shelving Details:
The large black cabinet in our basement bar has 6 adjustable shelves and significant depth to store a variety of items. I knew I needed to invest in versatile and stackable storage containers to maximize this space in this cabinet. I’ve shared in other posts my love for The Container Store and I was able to find exactly what I needed to make this cabinet meet our needs. All the storage containers can be used for multiple purposes which is why I choose to invest in these basics as I trust I can use them for many years.
Multi-Purpose Bins: Our daughter loves to do arts & crafts activities and these can be a real challenge to store. I’ve tried a larger wicker basket in the past and found it hard to find what we were looking for as different items would get thrown in the basket making it a messy mix of random items. Once I added in these multi-purpose bins we were able to create a system to organize all the things. These work so well for grouping like items together and keeping the right amount of each category so we can easily find what we need, when we need it. I used labels which can easily be removed and replaced with a new category as interests change over time.
Latch Storage Boxes: We have collected so many lego sets over the years and I struggled for a long time how best to store these in our home. I’ve learned there tend to be two approaches to legos – you either combine all the lego pieces and various lego sets into one big storage container or you carefully take apart each set and store with the manual allowing you to rebuild it again and again. I’ve tried both options and painfully decided keeping the legos as a set worked best for us. These latch boxes come in a variety of sizes and are also stackable, making this a great option to leverage height with your storage solutions. I use the large latch storage box for the bigger lego sets and the smaller options for other kids items or smaller lego sets.
Puzzles: We always have a White Mountain Puzzle out on our table and I have enjoyed watching our daughter learn to enjoy this activity as well. Storing puzzles can be a challenge and this deep cabinet helps us keep our favorites so we can redo them or loan to family and friends throughout the year. My only pro tip for storing puzzles is to put the edge pieces in a ziplock bag inside the box, saving you time when you are ready to repeat a favorite!
Lego Storage
Arts & Crafts
Puzzles
Activity Table
This table is used for puzzles, family game night, arts & crafts or casual evenings with food and wine while we visit with friends and family. Someday I plan to upgrade this table but for now this old Ikea table which easily wipes off marker, crayon and other mishaps works for us!
Cabinet Drawer Details:
Cabinet drawers are another great option to store various supplies or kids activities. I use the left set of drawers next to the large cabinet for our additional art supplies. The right storage containers can make all the difference to maximize how a drawer can be used, given you both versatility in storage options and allowing you to repurpose a traditional use of a cabinet to become a play zone for kids.
Top drawer: This drawer is slim and perfect to store items such as the larger coloring books or drawing pads we like to have on hand. We have a couple of nice pencil sets that are easy to pull out and take with us so I store these on top of the papers keeping this type of medium for art in the same spot.
Middle drawer: This drawer stores a variety of art supplies. I like using these containers as they fit well in the depth of the drawers and makes it easy for us to grab the container we need for the project at hand. This setup makes it really easy to see what we have and make the best use of our art supplies whenever the mood strikes.
Bottom drawer: I keep a large smartstore container with large handled tray in this drawer to store all of our Play-Doh supplies. We haven’t used this tote in years but we aren’t quite ready to let it go :). When we did use it frequently, this tote made it so easy to grab the bin and have what needed out on the table for all of our play-doh creations.
These storage containers and inserts are so versatile and as our needs have changed over the years I have been able to repurpose them for a variety of storage needs.
Art Supplies
Play-Doh
Final Thoughts
While there are advantages to having a designated room, I like having spaces in our main living areas which can easily entertain and store items for kids. This supports more together time and empowers children to be self sufficient in finding activities to do while spending time with adults.
Come back soon for more ideas on how to organize kids items in your home. Do you have a creative way you store kids toys in your home? Drop a note in the comment and share with others! I would love to hear from you!
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It was great to see a blog post address the organizational challenges that parents face if they don’t have a playroom for their children. These great ideas for storage were very helpful and inspired me to clean out the toy storage areas in my own home.
Love this! Love those beautiful built ins! With kids, I feel like I never have enough space for anything, so this was really useful as I need to up my organization game!