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My Favourite Toy Organising Ideas

Whilst I love having family time and the holidays have been lots of fun, it can be very a demanding and messy time. I’m desperate to create some order out of the chaos and distraction that has been filling my home and my mind! With the children back at school this is the perfect time to regain control and make space for another focus.

Thank goodness! I’ve done the first drop-off of the year, everyone is settled in and I’ve returned to a quiet house. I can take a breath, gather my thoughts and finally tackle those tasks that have been bugging me for a while now.

With the children back at school this is the perfect time to regain control and make space (in our homes and heads) for another focus; a new project, work, other commitments, hobbies, to just feel better prepared or to have time to care for ourselves.

Children seem to have so many toys and spread them all over the house. I think there are probably only a few rooms in our house that don’t have toys or books somewhere (I know I’m going to miss this in a few years!).

My favourite toy organising ideas:

1. Have a Place for Everything!

Display favourite toys and the items they use often on shelves that are easily accessible. Have labelled boxes (with pictures and words) and bags so that the children can easily see them and depending on their age, put them away!

2. Keep Toys Together

Store toys in categories so that they can be enjoyed with ease – e.g. keep all vehicles in a crate near to a floor with space to play, store pens and craft materials close to a table

3. Don’t have too many toys out

Rotate items, storing them and bringing them out a few months later to keep them fresh

4. Give away

Donate or hand down duplicates, toys that are no longer age specific or no longer played with. Too many toys can be overwhelming and won’t be appreciated

5. Create a mindset

Create a mindset that toys are to be enjoyed then moved on. Encourage your children to help you to give away toys that they no longer play with to other children to enjoy. Good times to do this are after long holidays, before Christmas and birthdays. (If you struggle with letting go for sentimental reasons find pictures of your children playing with those items or take photos before giving them away for someone else to love).

You might also like to read about the Perfect Time to Organise Children’s Things here.

About OrganisedWell

Would you like help getting organised?

If you need guidance, ideas and practical support to make more of your home, organise your possessions in a way that supports your best life or to get started with your decluttering project, then give me a call.

I provide tailored advice and practical support to clients looking to make changes, to create calm, ordered space and free up time and money to focus on the important things in life. Find out more about my support services or book an Enquiry Call.

Book an Enquiry Call with Laura

My top tips for packing for your holiday!

Summer is well and truly here and children up and down the country have broken up for the summer holidays. Hurray I hear you shout!

If you’re going abroad this year, you’re probably thinking about packing very soon. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be trying to take way more than you actually need, because you never know what you’ll need!

Here are my top tips to help maximise your packing:

have a small bag that is your power pack and assign this to someone to be responsible for the entire journey – pack passports, boarding passes, hotel booking print-outs, money, inhalers and essential medicines so that they are available whenever needed. This can be stashed in hand luggage if required as long as its secure
make a list outlining the activities for each day that you are away – now plan outfits for each day (including changes and underwear)
Ensure you have enough suitable outfits for each day and the day you travel home! Take tops and bottoms that you can mix and match and take Travel Wash to freshen them up between wears
Use a roll-up compression bag to reduce the size of items that don’t crease – swim wear, underwear, bulky sweatshirts etc
If you need to take shirts and other smart items in a small carry-on or rucksack – use Shirts Bag to ensure it all remains neat in your bag
Get out the shoes you want to take – take shoes that can go with multiple outfits to avoid needing to take lots
Take a quick drying sports towel for the beach as it takes up less space in your luggage and has the added benefit of drying quickly after each use (great for the last day when you need to pack after the pool!)
Remember you can only take 1 litre of liquids in carry on and they must be in a small plastic bag. Take multi-purpose products if you can – all-in-one shampoo and conditioner or shampoo/bodywash are great examples
Decant your face creams into smaller bottles or jars to fit them into your allocation
Buy compressed deodorants and travel toothpaste as these are in smaller containers
Get a multi-port charger so that you just need to take 1 plug and multiple cables to charge a number of devices
Don’t forget a bag for dirty washing

Whilst we are talking about getting organised, don’t forget to:

Dig out EHICs and check they are in date if you are going to Europe
Find out your passports and make sure that they are all in date and crucially you can find them!
Check-in and print your boarding passes as soon as you can – there is nothing worse than coming to print them the day before to find you’ve run out of printer ink
email or save your insurance policy and contacts to your phone so that you have them for reference

About OrganisedWell

Would you like help getting organised?

We provide tailored advice and practical support to clients looking to make changes, to create calm, ordered space and free up time and money to focus on the important things in life. We specialise in organising rooms, garages, wardrobes, paperwork and much more; see our services or get in touch.

The ‘Office in a box’: Organisation for Flexible Homeworking

Join me as I share my approach to decluttering my things and organising my ‘office in a box’ so that I have everything I need to hand.

Working from Home can be Challenging

It can be challenging to carve out some space to work and focus at home. Our home is traditionally our private space, safe and supportive, it is the place we nurture our family, feed and support our daily needs and play and relax.

But more and more, and particularly during the pandemic, our homes also became our work places. We started to work from our kitchen tables, sofas, bedrooms, sheds and anywhere else we could carve out some space.

Not only can it be challenging to find a space to work and focus, but it can also be difficult to ensure that you have everything you need. You need your work essentials to hand including charge cables, equipment, stationary and files otherwise you waste valuable time and energy trying to locate them when you need them.

Tidying up after you’ve completed your work is also a challenge. How to tidy up so that the space can revert to a functioning home for your family, whilst also keeping everything together,

I often work from home and before I was able to set-up an office for myself, I needed to ensure that I had everything to hand and could tidy it away quickly when my working day was done.

The Solution: My Office in a Box

To solve this problem, I created an ‘office in a box’ that I could take to the space I fancied working in each day.

Join me as I share my approach to decluttering my things and organising my ‘office in a box’ so that I have everything I need to hand.

And here is my finished box! I hope I’ve given you some ideas and inspired you do a quick organising session of your own!

Would you like help getting organised?

If you want guidance, ideas, or sensitive practical support to make more of your home, organise your possessions in a way that supports your best life or to get started with your decluttering project, then get in touch with me.

“Laura at OrganisedWell supported me to declutter and organise my office. This assistance has benefited my work allowing me to save time and have clearer head space.” – Barbara Demetriou

As Featured!

We’ve been busy sharing ideas and inspiration. Visit out As Featured page to see and hear what we’ve been up to!

Sunday Evening Organising

There never seems to be enough time in my week for everything I want to achieve so I love it when I find a hack for getting ahead!

Avoid Disorganised Monday Mornings

There never seems to be enough time in my week for everything I want to achieve so I love it when I find a hack for getting ahead!

Don’t you hate it when you always feel on the back foot; your morning is a crazy rush, whilst trying to get ready yourself, you dig out a school uniform only to find that there isn’t a clean school cardigan. You play hunt the school shoes with your youngest when you really need to be leaving the house and when you finally get out of the door, you realise you’ve left a bag behind.

During the day, your diary pops up a reminder for an event that you didn’t realise was coming up and haven’t prepared for, so you end up rushing to get prepared. You also need to zip round and sort out the house as you realise your friend is popping round for a coffee after school pick up. Later in the day your hungry family come back from work and school and are asking what’s for dinner. You haven’t had the head space to plan anything or shop for any ingredients.

Six Sunday Evening Organising Tips

Here are my 6 top tips for getting organised on a Sunday evening so that you’re well prepared for the week ahead.

Review your diary

Review your plans for the week ahead so that you know what’s coming up. Add time for any preparation and to complete any related tasks

Meal Plan

Make a meal plan for the week. That way you don’t need to think about dinner after your busy working day and when everyone is starving. We have a dry wipe board attached to the inside of a kitchen cabinet – we can open the door to review it whenever needed and whip it out to rewrite at the end of each week

Shopping List

Now you have a meal plan you can also make a food shopping list using a corner of the white board. You can take a photo or copy into your phone when you are ready to go to the shops.

Prepare Outfits

Put out children’s school uniform and your work outfits ready for the following morning.

Pack Bags

Ensure school, PE kit and work bags are packed, and coats and shoes are all in the launch area (hall way). When my daughter was young, I added a child height hook in the hallway so that she could be involved in managing her things. She felt so proud to be able to get her coat down from the hook and check everything she needed was in her school bag ready to leave the house!

Quick Tidy

Have a quick tidy round the house; recycle any kids drawings (unless they are special – pop those in your keep sake box), papers, notices (you’ve either actioned them or added them to your to do list, right!), magazines (if you’ve not read them by now – skim them to establish if they contain any articles you want to read, otherwise recycle). Pop dishes in the dishwasher or give them a quick wash. Return things back to where they belong and take with you anything that belongs upstairs.

Now you are much better organised for your week!

You might also like to read my recent blog where I share ideas on how to automate, simplify and schedule to make life run a little smoother.

Would you like help getting organised?

book a free enquiry call with Laura