Labeling Children's Toys

Janet Schiesl: Hi, I am Janet Schiesl from Basic Organization and I am talking about organizing toys. Now that we have sorted the toys into storage bins, the next important step is labelling the storage. This is a very important step. It is the way you are going to communicate from now on where things go. It also is a way that you will never hear, "I didn't know where it went," when your children make the excuse when they are trying to clean up. By labelling each bin, it should be very easy for anyone in the house to know where things belong. There are several different methods to labelling. You can use a labeller, it is very easy to do and they are very inexpensive, but you also can take an index card and write the name of the item on an index card and tape it to the bin. If you have young children that are non-readers, it is also very easy to also take an index card and get them involved by drawing a picture of the type of item. It could be a doll or building blocks, whatever they will know what goes in that bin and it will help them with the fact that they have drawn the picture. Also, if you have a box of an toy that you have just received, say, Lego, you can cutout a picture from on the box and tape that to your bin and that's a very good visual again for non-readers, but this really gets your children involved. Ask them what, well, how do they want a storage bin labelled. It just gives them the responsibility. It is much easier when you things labelled to breakdown the job. Again, when it is time to cleanup the toys, the children will know exactly what goes where and it makes the job much easier. Now that you have labelled the bins, we are going to talk about some of the responsibilities that you are teaching your children.