The Family Room

I've set out to reorganize my entire house.  I have no doubt this will take forever, but my goal has been/is to get through as much of it before Christmas as I reasonably can.  I started with our family room.  This is the room in which we spend 80% of our time, and therefore is the most difficult to keep clean and picked up.  I'm not a fan of "no toys in the living room" because my boys are so small that I'd rather have them playing in a space that I also like to hang out in.  Maybe when they get older we can have a rule that all toys stay in their rooms or the basement playroom, but for now, for us, it's just not feasible.

So instead I compromised.  I decided the only toys that would stay in the family room must fit in one of two places.  The way our family room is set up, we have a DVD cabinet that we no longer use for DVDs (because we stream all our media now; we don't even have a DVD player hooked up :P).  This has become a toy cabinet.  Our entertainment center also has a cabinet beneath the television that we use for larger toys.  If all the toys in that room can be put away in only one of those two places, then when the room is picked up it is all still organized and out of sight.

      

With the exception of one basket of books that sits under a coffee table, and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse that sits in an unusable corner between the wall and the cabinet, ALL family room toys now fit in one of thes two places.  Of course, Mommy and Daddy's toys need a place, too. :) There is a small basket that sits on the shelf under the TV to hold the controllers, etc for the Nintendo and the Wii, and the top shelf houses the DVR and my Yankee Candle stuff that I like to burn in the holder on top of the cabinet.  FINALLY, everything that belongs in this room has a place!

I printed a list of toys (with pictures) that belong in the TV cabinet and taped it to the inside of the door.  This way, when the boys (or daddy :P) are putting toys away, they will know that if the toy doesn't appear on that list, it doesn't belong in the family room.

The toy cabinet got a set of new baskets, all of which I found at the Dollar Tree.  I have to hunt around for baskets to fit this cabinet, as I have plenty of height and length, but only about 7" of depth to work with. The toys that don't fit in the baskets got labels with my trusty label maker :) on the shelf itself.  For the tags on the baskets, I printed pictures and words on DIY business cards.  I used a hole punch and some curling ribbon to tie them to the baskets.

     

And you see the two baskets on the top shelf that don't have labels?  Well, the boys don't know it yet, but I have labels printed and ready to go for those, too - for the Phineas and Ferb and Special Agent Oso figures they'll be getting from Mommy and Daddy for Christmas. ;)

Now, instead of toy cleanup taking 30 mins at night, it takes less than 5 - a VAST improvement!  The only problem I have is that now I just want to hang out in this room and enjoy the zen instead of tackling the chaos of the rest of my house. ;)