Hi, I'm Paige Killian and I'm passionate about helping busy moms of littles organize and style their life in three simple steps. Living this mom life is incredible and sometimes completely overwhelming. Is stressing about overstuffed drawers, never ending male piles a mountain of Legos and our kids artwork, really what God intended, no way.
Getting organized has been a game changer for me and also my clients, but it has to be simple or it just won't get done. So let's simplify the process and clear the clutter to see the blessings God has for us. I know your time is. So thanks for joining me each week for a healthy dose of organization and a whole lot of motivation.
Hello? Hello, Paige here to talk about. Your kids' toys and playrooms today. So these can be really amazing things or they can be the bane of your existence. I completely understand, and not only have I been hired many times, To work on these areas for my clients, but I as a mom and as a former elementary school teacher, have absolutely gotten my feet wet with dealing with this on my own as well.
So I completely understand wherever you are, wherever you fall on the spectrum of kids, toys, activities, areas, for them to play. I'm with you. I've been there. Let's go through this together because it is very possible to love your kids' toys and to love their activities, and to love the spaces where those things live.
If we've got some systems in place and we've got some organization around those areas, so let's talk about. First of all, always doing a regular purge of those items so that as they grow, you're always gonna have those appropriate kid toys and activities around, and you're also going to be making room for any more of that come in.
So like for holidays that are definitely coming up as I'm recording this episode, or for birthdays that might be happening throughout the year. Or even if your kids are attending other events or birthday parties for kids and they're going home with maybe some kinds of party favors and things like that, it's very easy for your possibly once organized or nearly empty spaces to quickly get cluttered with new stuff that's coming.
If we're not doing that very first E in my three E's philosophy, step one, that essential, which I really always love to start with a good purge. So let's make sure that you're going through and taking a look first of all at yours. Space that you have before you start the purge and let's make sure that we are deciding, is this where I want these things to live in the first place?
Because what you might find is that you had decided you were gonna keep kids' toys in your kids' room, and then you realized it's really become. Pretty distracting. Uh, I don't know if you guys have listened to past episodes where I've shared that. I've talked about my kids' bedrooms. Actually only having books and like stuffed animals to sleep with.
For many, many years I didn't have any toys at all in my kids' bedrooms because it made going to bed and that nighttime routine and even the morning routine, getting up and getting ready for school or for our day, no matter what we were doing, it made it so much harder when we. Toys in there that were distracting.
So a lot of times when I go into people's homes to organize and their play space is actually in their bedrooms, I will kind of take a quick browse around their house before we get going on that space in their bedroom, because I wanna make sure that the parents understand that there could be some issues with like behavior and getting to school on.
Or getting to bed at a decent hour if you are finding that they're very distracted by toys in their bedroom. So do consider that if you've got another area of the home, not necessarily a playroom. If you are lucky enough to have a whole additional room or area that is all for your kids to play, that is fantastic.
But living in California and living in New York for a while, I ran into lots of spaces that are. Smaller, you don't necessarily have the real estate to have a whole separate space for your kids to have a playroom. So if you live in places like Tennessee, you might be blessed enough to have a little extra real estate.
I know when we lived in Tennessee, a lot of times growing up, we would have an extra room that we were able to have for a playroom and it could quickly get out of control and cluttered and stuff could be everywhere, especially cuz there were three of us kids growing up together. So do consider as you're listening to this, what your space looks like.
If you are blessed enough to have a full playroom area. Congratulations. That's amazing. I will tell you though, that can come with some additional responsibility because that's an extra area of your home that you need to keep up with. So, uh, two things I wanna. Anything that we talk about on this episode where we're going to be talking about the three E's and how you can get that space organized is going to apply whether you have one or not.
And the other thing is I wanna remind you that I did this really fun episode with the ladies of Little Kingdoms, and they are Lilly and. Player and they have created this really fun design business where they'll actually come in and talk with you, get to know your kid, uh, take a look around your house and figure out what your home aesthetic is and really create together this designed, intentional play space for your kiddos, uh, whenever they're really little.
And it's just a great way to help them learn through playing and also have that freedom as a parent to kind of back off and let them have. Intentional, uninterrupted play time on their own, which is really exciting because the goal at the end of the day is to have these independent kids, as much as we love them and wanna keep them with us, it is our goal truly to make sure that they are raised to be independent enough to take care of themselves.
So it starts really. Young. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen. I wanna say it's episode one 30, but don't quote me on that. I will, however, put that podcast episode in show notes if you wanna check it out. So back to your space. Once you've established in your home where you would like to have your kids' toys and where you would like to have their play space, then you're going to start with your three E's.
You want to do, as I always say, that essential. Purge. Now, before you get to that, I do wanna mention too, a little parent hack. If you are having holidays come up or birthdays coming up and you have that feeling that new toys are gonna be coming in, you can always put on an invitation if you're sending out birthday invitations or you can send to your family and friends if you're going to be getting together for the holidays that you would prefer no gifts.
And here's the thing, you can say no gifts. And sometimes people will still give gifts. You can also ask them specifically for things that your kids might need. So if someone's saying, and I know our family does this a lot when our kids are having a birthday, or it's the holidays, they'll say, What do they want?
What do they want this year? We've now got an eight and a 12 year old. We've got a second grader and a sixth grader, and it gets to that place when they're growing so much that they really wanna make sure that they're not just giving another toy or another game that maybe they're not super into. They wanna give them gifts that are specifically personalized, so they love them.
I am a big fan of giving the gifts of experiences. So one of the things that I told my parents when it was Isabelle's birthday is that she really enjoys her guitar lessons. And so I said to them this year that she's starting volleyball. She's really loving that, but she's really missing her guitar lessons.
And so when they asked what they could do for her this year, I said, I would love it if you guys could give her. Guitar lessons, she would be thrilled. And hey, that takes a little pressure financially off us. You know what I'm saying? So that's a great one. Perhaps you guys wanna go on a vacation, and so maybe what they wanna do is give some money toward that, or perhaps.
One of the experiences if you don't live near your family is for them to fly you to them or for them to fly out to see you, and that is an actual experience. You can give the gift of togetherness. So do consider that if you feel like you're always inundated with new stuff. And now I will remind you that.
You could actually be the person who is contributing to the clutter in your kids' areas that are toy related or play space related. So be really real with yourself and say, Okay, self, is it me? Am I the problem ? Am I the reason my kids have got an out of control play area? Because we just continue to give and give and give them stuff.
And we don't do that first step of the purge. So once you go through, you take that bag with handles. I like to keep it super simple. If it feels overwhelming and you decide to, this is the step where you can decide that you want your kids to be involved as much or as little as possible because you know them.
Is it one of those things where they are going to, if you invite them in to do the purge with you, that they're gonna say, No, Mom, I love that. That's my favorite thing. You can't get rid of. And they might play with it once every two years. You know, kids really latch onto things like a comfort to them. So don't be surprised if you get ready to get rid of something because you're like, Oh, they haven't touched this in for year in for years.
In for years. . And then suddenly, that's the thing that they're telling you they love so much and they wanna play with it, and suddenly they're playing with it every day for the next week. So you make the. You decide what is it that we wanna keep in this space? And also consider if you've got an area that maybe you could house some things temporarily.
What I really love to do is, especially when my kids were even younger, I don't do it as much now, but I would keep some toys and some activities in a place-based, or excuse me, in a closet, in a separate closet or cabinet where they didn't see. And then I would rotate their stuff out. So I knew that those were still age appropriate toys.
I didn't wanna get rid of them yet. I knew once upon a time they liked them. But what happened is that new stuff had come in and that was taking up their time. So if you have an option to have a separate closet or a separate cabinet area that you might consider putting their stuff in temporarily and rotating those toys and rotating those activities, it's gonna be like getting new stuff all over.
And you're not gonna feel like you need to go out and get more stuff because you'll just say, Okay, now's the time, now's the month. We're gonna rotate and we're gonna have a whole new set of activities and toys. And that can be like holidays or birthdays all over again because these new things come out and they're like, Aha, I love this one.
Oh my gosh, I've missed it. And then they truly play with it and engage in that activity a lot more. So do consider doing that if you have that option. So once you've grabbed your bag with handles and you've put in anything, they're not using anything that's broken, anything that they just have outgrown because of maybe just their interests have changed or because it's just not age appropriate anymore.
Here's the kicker, That second step, the enhancement of the donation or selling of those items, don't take those things that you've just put in that effort and energy in getting rid of. And doing that good purge don't then take those things and go set them in another room of your house. Like mom and I joke about how we'll take stuff out of a closet or some area where we wanna get rid of it, and then it kind of goes to die in the dining room because people don't really use that dining room very much anymore.
And so you don't wanna just take your, your clutter and your stuff and put it into another room, or perhaps go put it in the garage where things might go to get left behind and to die. A sad, long, lonely death because no one's going to go back over there and pick them up and actually get them out of your house.
So be very intentional when you've got those bags with handles. And the reason I say that, by the way, if ever you wonder why I say bags with handles, it is truly for convenience because you can scoop them up easily if you're deciding to do a yard sale or a garage sale, you can just grab those and you can transfer them right outside the morning of the sale.
If you are donating them, you can. Grab them quickly and go put them in your car for donation. And that's what I wanna say. Repeat after me. I'm gonna pretend like I can hear you. Don't put your donations in the trunk of your car. Go ahead, say it. Don't put them in the trunk. Put them in your front seat. Put them in your front seat.
And the reason I say that is because how often do we stick those in the back of our trunk and then two months later you pop it open when you're going to put some groceries in there and you're like, Oh my gosh, I never donated this. This is what's been rolling around in the back of my trunk for the last two months.
So it's out of sight, out of mind sometimes. So if you don't have a ton of stuff, look, if you're doing an amazing essential purge and you put it in your trunk out of necessity because the whole front part of your car is loaded down, good on you, that's amazing. But if you're only doing a little bit of a purge and you need to go donate that, or you need to go take it to a friend because you're giving them some hand downs, put it in the front seat of your car because it's going to be top of.
Front seat of mind and then you're going to get rid of it faster. Cause you're gonna be like, I don't wanna look at that every time I, you know, get into my car to drive it somewhere. So make sure that you are putting it in a place where it is obvious that you need to immediately take that and drop it off at donation or get it outside.
To go do your yard sale or garage sale. By the way, if you do wanna tackle one of those before the winter months roll in and it gets too cold, go back and listen to that episode. I have all about doing a yard sale in three simple steps. I will definitely pop that link in show notes. I haven't brought that one up for a while, but it's super important in that enhancement of organizing your kids stuff.
You want to make sure that whatever you're not using anymore, you bless another family with it and give it to. Whether you're donating it or deciding that you're gonna get a little ROI and you're going to sell those items, don't forget, it doesn't have to be a physical sale in your front yard or your garage.
You can absolutely put it online. You can sell something through Facebook Marketplace, or you can sell something through eBay or wherever else. Maybe you just wanna post on Facebook or Instagram and say, Hey, I have some of these things I'm getting rid of. Any takers. You might also be a part of a Facebook group like I am, where it's a noby situation and you just post a photo of it and say, Hey, I'm leaving this out front.
Does anybody want it? And then people can just swing by and pick it up. And that's usually for friends too, by the way, if you don't want strangers coming by your house. So that's an option as well. But whatever you do, make sure you add that enhancement to your essential courage, and you definitely get that stuff you're no longer using.
In the proper hands of others who can't. Last and final step, and this is what I really love. This is the fun part. You are going to be doing that extra. This is the final touch. This is gonna take your kids toys and playroom or. Wherever it's gonna be, play space area to a whole new level because it's gonna be organized, it's going to have the proper containers.
You're gonna style that space so that it's easily accessible for your kids or it's not, if you're needing some of those activities to be placed up high. Perhaps you've got kids of different ages and some of them can't be trusted with little small parts cuz they're choking hazards. Or maybe it's just one of those things where there are activities that you don't want to come out until you've got parental supervision.
Like if it's a super messy toy or there's a million pieces and you wanna just make sure that that only comes out whenever the parents or a sitter are around to help. So do consider. The placement of this stuff when you're putting it back in place. So if you need to install some floating shelves in your kids' rooms or in a closet or in some type of area, if you do have a playroom, maybe you wanna put some floating shelves, Maybe you wanna have a built in case situation.
That turns into an organized toy space, and so you wanna have like some convenient fabric bins that have a handle so your kids can reach up and grab those. I wanna suggest that what you do is when you're going through that good purge, before you start to put whatever is left over, back in these organized containers, you wanna group them together.
Categories. So this is a really important part of that third step, that styling of your space and organizing it. You wanna make sure you're grouping these things together in light categories. So you wanna put like all your games together, you wanna put any activities together that may, may feel more like an arts and craft situation.
You wanna put all of your cozy, uh, soft stuffed animals together, you want to put all of your Legos or your building blocks together. You wanna take all your cars, all your baby dolls, you get the idea. Anything that has a certain category, you want to put those together in like, Categories so that that way when you put them back in these proper bins that you decide are appropriate for that space, that your kids are going to know, Hey, this is what I wanna play with today.
I don't have to pull everything out of the shelves or everything out of the closet or the cabinets in order to find what I'm looking for. So this is also going to lend itself to not having a massive amount of stuff strewn all over the place and then having a miserable. Trying to clean it up after. So I always think about those kindergarten days of clean up, clean up everybody every day.
Do you remember that song? Well, we would sing that and everybody would go back and whatever activity they were playing with from magnet tiles to connect four games to Zoo Animal. Uh, Creatures that they were playing with. We had all different types of things, so we might have like the zoo animals in a big tub on the ground.
They would grab that tub and they would scoop those off of the table or off of the floor into the tub. It was very simple. Everybody knew what went there, and that stayed in a certain area in the classroom. They would go over to the little open cubby spaces. They would get the container that the magnet tiles would go in or that the, you know, race cars would go in, or I'm thinking about my classroom and I'm thinking about my home, and the kids would put those back where they went.
And cleanup was a snap.
A friendly reminder that my book is now available on Kindle and Paper bat over on Amazon. So if you haven't gotten it yet or you have and you'd like to get more, head over to Amazon and search for, I've Got You Girlfriend. Why? Getting organized and living this mom life is not a solo. You can also find a direct link over on my [email protected].
Thanks so much for making it a best seller and back to the show.
All right. What is cleanup like in your home? Is it always a fight? Is it always a frustration? Are you always stepping on Legos on the floor? Are you stepping on those zoo animals on the floor? Is it a fight because it hasn't been organized and you don't have those easy systems in place that you can go back time and time again to and do a quick.
Well, then you need to set some organization boundaries in your home, and I totally have an episode for that as well. I'll put it in show notes. Set those organization boundaries because you need to let your kids know this item or these activities or every single toy and activity you have in our home will be taken away.
There will be consequences if you are fighting back or resisting when it's time to clean. And the reason that we're doing that is not cuz we wanna be mean old mom. We want to make sure that playtime is fun and cleanup is easy. There's nothing to argue about that everybody wants that playtime should be fun.
Whether it's independent play, which again, you hear from Lily and Claire that that is so very important and you wanna make sure that. So easy to clean up that there's not a fight after, and it can be done quickly whether you're doing this independently or you have somebody there to help you, and you guys are tackling it together.
I will also mention that in my kindergarten classroom. And as a parent myself, or back in the day when I was a nanny or a babysitter, you wanna make sure that you're giving your kids that five minute warning time so they can start to wrap up whatever that amazing playtime is that they're doing. If they are creating something, you can have, I mentioned floating shelves or a bookcase, or perhaps even a specific area like my.
Underneath his loft bed. He has an area that's just an old nightstand that we had when he was really little. I slid it underneath his loft bed, so that way it's not front and center when you walk in his room, you just don't see this sitting out. But that is an area where he is got one basket of Legos underneath.
He's a Lego lover and on top he's got a little shelf and then he has the very top of the nightstand, and those are either his completed Lego creations that he's super proud of and his masterpieces that he likes to keep looking at and playing with, or it's a work in progress, so that way he doesn't feel like he has to wrap up what he's doing right away.
We have to go to a volleyball practice or we have to go to school, or we have to go to the grocery store with mom to go get dinner. Instead, he feels like, Okay, I can put back the ones that I am not using right now into that basket. One basket simple, slides it in. And then I can take the thing that I'm still working on and I can set that down on the top of that little nightstand area, that little table.
And that still is my work in progress area. And so then it's easy for him to say, Okay, mom, I'll be right there. He quickly puts it away. He comes down, hops in the car with us. When we come back, I can then walk in and I can see that he's put that back and it hasn't been a fight because we've got a system in place.
We've got it organized. It is one activity that he does in one space. He gets that one thing out at a time when he wants to play with magnet tiles. He goes down to our living room. It's actually like a little sitting room area. I got, uh, I talk about this on another episode where we really just talk about living rooms.
And, uh, one of the dads actually, who is a listener of the podcast, he reached out to me and he said, We don't have a playroom and their bedroom is overrun with toys and I can't stand it. What do we do with these toys? And of course I said, Let's talk about the three E's. Have you done a good purge? You need to get rid of stuff that they're just dragging out, but they're not actually playing with, They're not engaged.
With it. So I, I'd give both of your daughters a bag with handles. Get rid of anything you're not using, donate that, and then you need to let your daughters know, If I come in here day after day and your stuff is all over the place, I will start collecting it. If I've asked you to put it away and you haven't yet, and I've.
Designated a certain area, You know, you have to meet them where they're at, if they need your help, and you need to be putting in these proper bins, perhaps a bench that is also storage that you can open, that you drop stuff in quickly. It doesn't have to be overly complicated. You don't have to have Legos that are organized by color and by shape of every single block.
Don't overly organize, and then you get into trouble with that. You wanna. Where they're at their age, appropriateness. You wanna take that into consideration, put in the proper organization to make it easy. Then you wanna set those organization boundaries and say, This item is gonna be in limbo and I'm gonna take it away for the week, and you're losing this.
If I see that you're putting your other stuff away, you can earn it back. If you don't, we're gonna give this toy to somebody else who's gonna make sure that they're putting it away when their parents say time is up. And then we talked about his living room space, and I said years ago I got this really great table console table, very narrow and simple from way fair.
Dot com, check that out. But you can get a consult table anywhere. And what I did is I put this in my living room. Uh, at the time I put it, it sat back behind my couch. I don't have that option now with our new home, but we have a little sitting room that's separate from our living room. So in our little sitting room, I took that exact same console table.
It's just wood on top, and it has some rounded sort of raw iron looking metal bars. There is a, you know, the, like the very top of it and on top of it I have a couple of decorative books that are actually secret books. You open them up and inside, they're empty, and so you can put some little things in there if you need to, like, if you wanna hide a remote, if you wanna hide some matches, cuz there's a candle.
Obviously you wanna make sure that that is an age appropriate choice. You don't wanna be. Tucking matches a way where a kid can open that up and see those and start a fire. Don't do that. Uh, but anything, you know, if your kids love making bracelets and they have beads and things like that, get one of those cool decorative books that opens up.
And you can pop in the decorative beads, close it up when they're not using it, and then if you're sitting and watching tv or you're sitting in the sitting room and you decide you wanna open up that cool book and you wanna do some bracelet making, and then you close it up and you tuck it away, that's a fun little system that we've got in place as well.
If you wanna do something like that and you've got really little things, you don. Really want those to get lost in like a large toy bin. That is a fun little secret surprise that I like to show the kids that they can use to tuck that away. It's super convenient, but also it's kind of fun. It's like a little surprise hiding place.
That's always fun too, when the kids' friends comes up, come over and they get ready to do that activity and they're like, Oh, that's fun. And then I'll have the moms text me and be like, Okay, where'd you get those little. Decorative books. They're like different name brands. So it's like Chanel or um, Dior or Tom Ford or something like that.
And you open these books up, they look like these big beautiful coffee table books and you open them up and they're secret storage. I love that. So consider something like that where you're actually organizing your kids' toys in plain sight. They're not looking like clutter and a total mess, and they're super easy to clean up and put away fast.
So I talked to that dad about that. I talked to him about, you know, just that console table that I had, and I put in three fabric bins that are easy to pull out. The kids drop in, like we have magnet tiles in one. We have my son's race cars in another, and actually now we have two magnet tiles. Ones because we add to them because my kids still love magnet tiles.
Even my daughter in sixth grade. Sometimes she'll sit down. If we have the little neighborhood kids who come over and they wanna play in that sitting room, we pull out now the two bins and they build these massive creations because we keep adding new magnet tiles. Year after year, they'll get a new set where we'll ask the grandparents, Hey, you wanna do one more set of magnet tiles?
Because the kids love them so much, and that is really a great way too of incorporating maybe some of the other things. Sometimes they make these big magnet towel creations and they become a garage. For my son's race cars that he loves. So he might have those three bins out cuz they're building the creation and then he's also using them as a garage or a home that he pulls the cars into the driveway in this home that he built with magnet tiles, if you have those good old fashioned Lincoln logs or something, that's a fun thing to do as well.
So you might have a couple different activities out at the same time, but again, Super easy. When I say, Okay, guys, dinner's ready. It's time to help clean up. And so one kid will grab the magnet tile bin and put all those in. The other kid will grab the race car toys and stick those in another bin, pop the top on, put 'em back, and again, they're organized in plain sight.
And that's it. It's super easy. The last thing I'll say is if you are doing that, consider. That you might wanna have a miscellaneous bin. And the reason for that is because sometimes you have a little one off, You might have one bouncy ball, you might have one random party favorite that the kids really loved from a, you know, you don't have like a whole set of something, but they went to a birthday party, came home with one item.
Um, I think about those little paddles that have a bouncy ball attached to it and you can bounce it, or the little things that look like ice cream cones and you pop the button and then the ice cream ball. Out the styrofoam, not styrofoam. What is it like the squishy mesh ball? So things like that. You might have little one offs that the kids like to play with, but you don't have a whole set.
So you're not gonna have it be in it's one and only . You know it's one and only little item in a contained box. So you might just decide that what you wanna do is actually have a small miscellaneous bin, and that can just be like kind of those little hodgepodge things that you throw in there as. So hopefully these ideas were helpful for you today.
Do not underestimate a good purge and make sure that when you do put in those items, after you've set those organization boundaries and you've let your kiddos know how important it is to clean up after themselves, that you wanna label those properly so that when your kiddos are putting them, They know what bins to put them in.
If you, you only have a few of them. Like I said, for us, we don't need the labels on those in the living rooms cuz the kids know magnet tiles, cars, and then they have one miscellaneous bin. So if you need to be more specific because maybe you have more items, more sets of things, then it's a great idea to consider What type of clip labels.
I love a clip label, uh, you wanna put on. You and you can find them anywhere. You can find them anywhere. Amazon Container Store, Target, Michaels. You can find clip labels anywhere. So pop those on and then you can rotate them. You can change them out if you need to. You can do dry erase labels, you can do, um, adhesive labels if you've got like a good Ole Puch labeler and you wanna stick that on there.
That way you can peel it off and put a new thing on if you want to. Perhaps you would like to do. Photo of whatever is inside because your kids aren't reading yet. So if you try to insist that your kids are cleaning up and they put 'em in the right bins, but they don't know how to read the word dolls, cars, you know, whatever, then maybe you wanna take a picture of one of those items and that becomes your label.
That you stick on that container, if that is something that you are trying to look for more ideas on. I have also got an episode called Label Your Stuff and Choose the right Containers. So I will put all of those in show notes. So please go back and listen to those if you need some more detailed help.
But hopefully these are some great ideas for you to get your kids toys organized and their play space. I will talk to you next week for some more organization motivation for the busy mom of littles and bigs. I can't get over how big my kids are these days. It happens. They grow up fast. But if you've put in some organization practices, When they are really little, I promise you it is going to pay off as they grow.
So take the time to get organized, teach your kids how to do this, be responsible for their stuff, putting it back. Set those organization boundaries and it will be a win. Win for everybody now and in the future. Talk to you next week. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Mom's Organization Motivation Podcast.
For more resources to organize and style your busy life, head over to everything with style.com and connect with me on Instagram at everything with Style. Mom, if this episode was helpful for you, please share it with your friends rate and review it on it. That's Apple Podcast now and let me know what you'd like to hear about next.
Thanks again for listening and happy organizing.