This may be a fairly obvious one, but it took us several tries to figure out the ideal toy storage system for a household of psycho-monkey-boys. Why do we need special storage? Oh, well you see, we have this loft which overlooks our downstairs. It has a railing, and the drop is probably about 15-20 feet. (I’m not good at measuring such things) The floor below is made of lovely stone tiles. Fun to look at, not so fun to land on! And my PMB children kept taking whatever storage furniture or bins we provided, dumping the contents, and pulling said storage to the loft railing for the purpose of climbing. Little table and chairs we had in the loft? Gone. Big Toybox/Bench? Only if we bolt it to the wall, and my husband wasn’t going for that. Toy bins? No way. We tried that and they were ideal stairsteps, until they eventually broke under the weight of the PMBs. (and yes, I do watch my kids. But there are four of them and one of me and I have to use the bathroom sometime!)
So now we have arrived at…
ToyBags. The one pictured is one of the nicer ones which I just got off the clearance shelf at WalMart. We also have many of the plain canvas variety. The beauty is that when they are dumped, which happens 97 times a day, they are, of course, useless for climbing.
Now if my kids ever lay hands on some rope, they might think of using them to lower something or someone down from the loft… but for now I think we’re safe.