Trying to tame the toys!

Moms, you know what I'm talking about when I say toys can take over your home in no time flat!

I can imagine it gets pretty bad if you're dealing with little girl toys. Dolls, doll and Barbie clothes and accessories, princess everything, Littlest Pet Shop animals, etc. My personal experience is with boy toys, though. I am swimming (drowning?) in Legos, train and track sets, die-cast cars, Lincoln Logs, puzzles and books. Hubby finished the basement a couple years ago, so thank goodness all the toy clutter is not concentrated upstairs in our small house, but still, we are overrun. There are just not enough places to store all the plastic obscenity! Our four-year-old has definitely been spoiled (Not just by us, I might add). At least we had another boy, so the little one can enjoy the same toys and we don't have to add all sorts of pink and purple sparkly madness to the mix!

So, I dragged the boys around town today to try to find some sort of a storage system to tame the toy clutter in the playroom corner of the basement. I was envisioning a cabinet in which everything would neatly fit, and the doors could be closed when we wanted the toys out of sight. No such luck. Cabinets exist, but they're ugly and expensive, and wouldn't hold what we need them to hold. So, I opted for the less expensive, but still ridiculously overpriced plastic shelving. I bought a five-shelf system after noticing it was marked at a lower price than the smaller four-shelf system. I wrestled it into my tiny trunk, secured it with a bungee cord because the trunk wouldn't close, got it home and down the stairs and assembled it. Thank goodness that part was simple!

But... the top shelf was so close to the ceiling, I couldn't put anything on it!

So, I emptied a four-shelf system I had in another room with spare kitchen stuff on it and hauled it out to the toy area, where I spent a great deal of time arranging toys on the shelf. My plan was to have a place for everything, but again, no such luck.

Oh well, I guess it's better than it was.