How to Organize A Playroom

Hello all you beautiful people! If you have just started following me (WOOHOO!! and a HUGE thank you!) then let me first start by explaining what I’m doing over here before we dig into how to organize a playroom.

My house is a mess (at least for me and my sanity). We have too much stuff. Many things do not have a place or a home. Looking at my whole house is so DAUNTING!

So, I’m breaking my house into rooms and tackling a room each month. This makes it so much more manageable. This is month 2 and so far I am loving this!

If you want to read more about the whys and how I organized this year long project then head here, here, here, and here.

Okay, let’s get to why you are here: how to organize a playroom! Eddy and I went back and forth on this for a very long time. We wanted a playroom but that meant giving up our workout room/office/craft room who am I kidding it turned into our junk room!

Back in the fall we had mostly emptied out the room and put a ton of junk in our garage. This made emptying out the space for our future playroom pretty darn easy. It took me about 20 minutes.

Here is the list of thing we wanted to do in the playroom:

• install carpet (it had a cement floor)
• clean the room
• fix some plumping on one part of a wall
• remove the door to the room
• fix the door framing
• add baseboard in the closet
• add a door to the space for the future bathroom
• buy a bookcase
• go through all the toys
• organize the toys
• layout of the room
• decorations/pictures/etc

That is a long list. Currently most of those things are completed. Yay! We are to a point where it is good enough. We want the kids to play in the space for a few weeks. Then we will do all the fishing touches.

Steps in How to Organize a Playroom

First Empty Out the Space

It is so important to empty the space out completely! It is nice to be able to start from a clean slate. This will be the best time to clean the carpet, walls, ceiling, windows, and window coverings.

Sadly I totally forgot about cleaning everything. I was so excited to get carpet, that I completely forgot. So it will have to be done later.

Now that you have an empty room it will be much easier to visual how the room will look. You can think about what you will need to buy, if anything.

Next Organize Your Toys

I pulled the toys into the family room. They sat there for a good day before I had time to go through them, all at once. Wham bam!

I grouped things into like piles. For example: dress ups, cars, baby toys, animals, dolls, etc. As I was going through the toys I had a huge box for toys not wanted, a sack for garbage (broken toys or total junk), and a sack for recycle.

The only thing we had our kids help us with was the insane amount of stuffed animals. I didn’t count but I bet we had around 100 (grandma’s I think we are good in the stuffed animal department… 🙂 haha).

I loaded two boxes with stuffed animals that the kids forgot we had. These were part of the BUNCH we put in the garage in the fall. That left two heaping tubs full for the kiddos to go through.

We sat them down and I tossed the stuffed that were there’s to them. We let them pick a few for their beds and the most went into a super cute fabric tub. This will stay in the playroom. Some were added to the give away pile.

We bought a darling animal print fabric-ish tub and the little girls have their stuffed animals in that. We just put it in their closet.

Then Figure Out How to Store Toys

We already had the small white bookcase from Ikea. We bought a longer one (it has 8 cubbies) and some fabric storage boxes. Even though we have more toys then those 12 total cubbies can hold I didn’t want bigger bookcases.

Here’s why: My kids like a hard surface to play on. These bookcases are a great height for that. If we have huge bookcase we will fill them. I don’t want a bunch of toys always getting mixed up and on the floor.

All of the extra toys we are not playing with right then will be in the closet, nicely organized. Every so often we will rotate the toys. The kids also have a few toys that are special to them or are death toys (Legos, very small pieces) that they will keep up in their rooms for quiet time or playing with.

We decided to get the fabric storage bins to hold toys. The only draw back was labeling. I searched on Pinterest and Google and found a lot of good ways to add labels on fabric.

This is what I want in my labels: easy for me to switch when I switch toys, hard for my kids to take off or play around with… I’m a little stumped. Send me your awesome ways that you label fabric bins!

Then Set Up the Playroom

This step is really fun! I had a great time putting the toys we wanted to start out with into the fabric bins and into the bookcase. Once my son got home from school I gathered my kiddos together and we went downstairs.

I think I may have been more excited then they were. Haha! My girls stayed and played while my son went outside. In his defense it’s finally getting nice enough to play basketball or football outside.

We have a rough set up. Just like a rough drafted when writing. So far I like where things are placed. We will give it a few weeks to see how the kids play in the space. This will give us time to finish the last few things on our list:

• old door framing and removing the hardware
• adding the new door to the office
• wall work around the new door
• storage for toys not being used
• possibly finding a small table and chairs
• decor on the walls

Lastly Enjoy the Heck Out of the Playroom

YESSSS!!!!! We made it! You and me both! We now have a newly organized playroom. We can sit back, relax, and let our kiddos play happily ever after.

Until the next space is calling our name to come and organize it. Or the kids start fighting/calling us/need us for the millionth time. 🙂

Good luck when you choose to organize a playroom or any room!

Xoxo, Steph