Toying with ideas

At home, XX spends his time watching his favourite cartoons - Spongebob Squarepants and most recently, Wow Wow Wubbzy - and playing with his toys. He'll fiddle with his brother's Transformers, push his cars everywhere or ask me to hold a robot to make them fight. He also likes to cook up "biscuits and donuts" for me to gobble up like Cookie Monster or we'll have a pretend fizzy drink and then go "burp!".

I've no problem with him emptying all the bags of toys everyday. Afterall, what's the point of toys if you don't take them out and play with it? Even one night when he and KK decided that dumping ALL their toys into a toy hill was fun, I reasoned it as just a new way of playing with old toys. We only have to keep them afterwards. The kids will help if I ask them to but generally, every night there is a recurring scene of mummy or daddy combing the living area and packing all the toys into their respective bags and boxes. Even though I have a separate bag or box for the different types of toys, even after packing them, I'm still unsatisfied with the sight of the pile of plastic bags and odd sized boxes sitting on the floor at a corner of our living room.

Since we moved to Melbourne 1 year ago, the toy collection has grown so much that the few plastic boxes they came in no longer contains all of them. The ugly toy corner really irks me and I begin to look for a storage solution.

This 'project' took me a few weeks. First, I need to convince my Hubby that we NEED a toy storage. He was initially against spending unneccesary for an additional piece of furniture. As we are still staying in rental property, the idea is to have as little furniture as possible so that any move out will be easy. To meet that criteria, I need to find something that doesn't cost too much, is re-usable and easy to move around. At the same time, I want a storage that can allow me to categorise the toys and one where the kids can self help themselves. It should have compartments that are big and small enough for the different types of toys.

I explored online shopping websites and consulted toy stores, storage retailers, big and small. I found many toy storage units but they cost at least $100, plus the compartments are all one size and usually too small for the big toys. They are also not reusable. Meaning, when there's no use for toys, what can I do with it? I'd considered plastic storage boxes, but I hated the lids. From my experience, the lids are usually not used and thrown around. It also means I have to fit all the toys inside nicely for the lid to close, which is too much effort everynight. Stacking them up too high is dangerous and the kids would need help to get at a box. Scattering them around on floor level is going back to square one.

I decided that a drawer system would work best. The choice is between a plastic one or a wooden cabinet with plastic pull out boxes. Plastic ones are not that cheap, with a simple 3 drawer unit costing almost $50. The capacity is not sufficient too. Finally I decided a trip to Ikea is neccessary. I was eyeing the Trofast toy storage system. The wooden frame comes with slots and in different sizes so you can combine from 3 sizes of bins to fit the frame. The only prohibition is the cost. I would have to spend at least $180 for a unit that can fit all the toys.

Alas, at Ikea, we found a better solution - The Antonius system. Like the Trofast, it is basically a frame with slots. Only it is a metal frame and much cheaper. $20 for the 120cm frame with 6 slots. There are 2 sizes of the plastic bins, $9 and $12 each. An alternative is the wire basket that only cost $5 each but that's not too suitable when it comes to small toys that will fall through the holes. Of course, it doesn't look as colourful and pretty as the Trofast. But I'm willing to overlook the aesthetics for a total price of $68 and a much bigger capacity.

Looking at the toy corner now, I'm a happy woman.