Project: Play Room Bins

Wow, I didn't expect to be gone longer than a week but here we are. I apologize if you happened back once or twice only to be confronted with the same old post. I was planning on posting while I was gone this past week to an out of town meeting but it didn't go as well as we had hoped. Sigh.

So, needless to say I've been really thinking about things other than work. One of the big things on my list has been reorganizing what used to be our spare bedroom into a play room. Wanting to take back our living room, this was our way of sequestering the toys into one space.

This is what the room looked like one we cleaned everything out:

We had taken out a full bed, a night stand and a dresser and I was in the middle of reclaiming the closet when I decided to snap this shot. I was beyond excited to get this room back into a functional space again (we don't always have overnight guests and when we do, they end up in our bed!).

I added a few shelves and some cubby shelving I purchased on clearance and, VOILA!, here is our playroom now:

Yes, it is still messy, but it is a controlled mess. This was after a day of playing. Isn't it fun? I wasn't sure about the natural wood look of the cubbies below the white shelves, but I really think it works. I'm not a matchy-matchy person at all so this suits me just fine.

This room is a work in progress so I'll be revisiting this room once in a while to show you something else we've done. We are so short on space in our house so I am trying to be extra creative in how we organize our stuff. (My son is still wondering what happened to his oversized, plastic workbench. It took up so much room that I thrifted the piece in a second hand shop. Too bad the kid is so perceptive.)

In order to have some catch-all bins to corral the little toys, I found this fab tutorial from an awesome lady who, sadly, is no longer blogging. She is leaving up her blog for a while though, so hop on over there while you can to check out her tutorial on how to craft fabric bins.


Instead of putting the label on the front of my bins, I opted for a handle. I measured the cubby size and made a bin that just fits! It's better than being a little too large and I've been down that sad road before. More than once.


With the repurposed cardboard inserts, the bin is really sturdy. I made sure to use the heavy-weight fabric too in order to hold up to all the rough play.


So far I've just made two, but I have plenty of fabric to make more! I plan on making a few more to hold all the other little toys that seem to find their way to the floor...