We keep the majority of Kieran's toys in the living room, as that's where we spend the bulk of the day. Our main storage system is an Expedit shelf from Ikea with two black cloth bins where we hide the toys at night (Okay, so some nights they don't get put away, but most of the time we try to have the living room look less like a daycare once Kieran is in bed).
I realised recently that some of the parts of sets like blocks were going missing, since we just toss things willy nilly into the bins, plus Kieran has a knack for dropping them behind furniture. I also wanted to start him having more structured play time instead of the "have at it" approach we've been using so far. I think he's at the age now where we can sit with a specific toy and play with just that one, at least for several minutes. I wanted a way to keep things that belong together, together, but that still wouldn't take up too much space.
I remembered seeing an idea a while back of storing shoes in plain boxes with a photo on the outside so you'd know which of your 200 pairs to look for. I knew I didn't want to use boxes, they would take up too much room, but something along those lines would be awesome. It finally hit me that I could make drawstring bags and transfer a photo of the toy to the front! I worked on the first three this weekend.
The first step was taking a photo of the toys, (which meant finding all the pieces!), then printing them onto photo transfer paper. Then I used this tutorial to make the bags. I upcycled our old sofa slip cover as the fabric. I made one adjustment which was to first hem the long sides, so that the casings wouldn't have raw edges.
Once I had the pieces cut out I transferred the photo to the front (this is where I confirmed that we need a new iron, not that I iron that much, but it would make projects like this go so much faster!).
Then I stitched up the bags, and added the ribbon drawstrings. I originally intended to use twill, but my stash has gone missing since the move, so I substituted grosgrain ribbon instead.
Simple and effective toy storage! The bags can still get tossed into the bins, but now everything stays together.
I think it will also be a nice aid for Kieran when he is old enough to help putting his toys away at night. He already seems to approve of the idea.
He loves putting things into and out of bags, boxes and bins, so the bags are a new toy in themselves.
Now I just need to make about six more!
