Wednesday, August 21, 2013

How I clean and organize the house: Part II - Organizing trucks and bath toys

I've got two kids who love to take baths. And with baths comes a whole bunch of tub toys. Stores sell large toy scoops for $20 or so in the shape of turtles and ladybugs which also act as toy storage, but I wanted something cheaper and more adult-looking and so I looked on Pinterest and found this solution to the tub toy invasion.

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I bought a spring-loaded curtain rod at Ocean State Job Lot for $5 and then hopped over to the dollar store and bought these green baskets. I hung them with shower curtain rings. It's fun because you can pick out which baskets will work best for you--and not just for toys, you can use these caddys for shampoo and soaps and sponges and razors, etc--I found the best baskets don't stick out too far. Total cost = $8. There is no drilling and everything is adjustable.



Although sometimes all you need to have fun in the tub is bubbles.

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Dylan also loves trucks and some of them are absolutely huge. He has hundreds of them, some as big as three feet long and as small as two inches. When his collection outgrew our space I searched everywhere online for "truck storage" and found nothing that really worked for us. Most ideas involved baskets and buckets and square shelves. So I bought this 5-tier metal shelf at Target for $59. I painted a wooden sign which reads, Dylan's Truck Garage, and because he is an adventurous little boy I installed it inside of his closet so that I didn't have to worry about the shelves tipping if he tried to climb it.

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I think I counted about 34 trucks/planes/helicopters/bulldozers/cars/buses tonight but the count varies depending on which vehicles Dylan is currently doting on. I use the higher shelves for arts and crafts storage since Dylan can't reach those anyhow. Because we call this his truck garage he is more than happy to park his trucks here at the end of the day. It feels less like cleaning up for him and more like play. And I love it because I can shut the door and hide three dozen very large toys.