Project Time: 10 minutes
Project Budget: $5.00-$10.00
Project Budget: $5.00-$10.00
I will be the first to say that my children are absolute sweethearts and I am very grateful God blessed us. With that said anyone who has kids knows the lovely side effects of toys and stuffed animals strewn all over: Cars, action figures, books, dolls, etc. There are awesome bins and shelves, cubbies, or buckets for toys (we’ll go over toy organization in a future post!).
What do you do with the stuffed animal collection your kids seem to accumulate overnight?
Step 1 – Purging
Gather all of the stuffed animals and separate them with a keep pile and donate pile.
Gather all of the stuffed animals and separate them with a keep pile and donate pile.
If your children are too young to understand and may get upset you may want to do this during naptime, or school. If age appropriate get your kids involved and explain to them they are going to be helping other kids feel special by donating some of their animals they don’t play with.
I will admit it, many times I have tried to weed out the collection but found many sentimental reasons to keep them (His “first” animal when he was born from uncle, first teddy from daddy, the bear from his hospital visit, etc.) . Strive for the rule of 1/3rd. If you can weed out at least 1/3 of the collection to donate you are doing great!
Where do the keepers go? More than likely you have a shelf, box, or possibly an animal hammock. The problem is most of the time if they are out of reach for your children to play with they are nothing more than dust collectors and that dust can be a health hazard to your child (breathing problems such as asthma or allergies). Maybe you keep them on a lower shelf within reach for playtime. This is what I tried to do and it ended up looking like this:
No matter how you try to sit them up all cute it ends up looking like a piled up mess. In my house with a preschooler and toddler having them on a shelf would last about 2 minutes and then they end up on the floor. There has got to be a way to contain these animals!
I am a big fan of using things outside of their intended purpose. It comes from a bit of creativity, but mostly from our family value of frugality. So here is my answer for getting those stuffed animals organized!
Step 2 – Supplies
A pair of scissors
A door (Most likely the back of the bedroom door)
An over-the-door shoe organizer!
Step 3 – Hang
I found the easiest thing to do was to first hang the shoe organizer on the door according to the directions. If your organizer has separate hooks (with the eyelets in the fabric as shown) you can also chose to hang it on the wall using nails or wall hooks.
(P.S. Those would be Mr. A2Z’s arms hanging the organizer for me while I was behind the camera ;)
Step 4– Cut
STOP!! – Read ALL of Steps 4 & 5 BEFORE you cut ALL pockets! :)
Open up the pockets by pulling the top part of each pocket out. We are going to create a strap or “seatbelt” for the animals to hang onto using the top part of each pocket. Take one hand pull out the top of one pocket and fold it in half, then with the other hand grab your scissors make a cut line below the top of the pocket about ¾ of the way to the back of the pocket. There you have it, your strap for the animal to hang in.
Step 5 – Strategy
Rather than doing all of the pockets at once and then placing the animals in the slots I suggest placing the (larger) animals as you go. If you cut all of the pockets into straps before placing the animals you may find that there are smaller animals that just won’t hang in the strap and may be better off just tucked into a pocket that has not been cut.
*Also, consider which pockets/straps your kids will be able to reach and place their favorite animals within reach. You can save the top pockets/straps for the more collectible/sentimental animals for more of a “display only”.
Step 6 – Complete
Place your remaining animals that are too small for slots in the empty/uncut pockets. (You can also use pockets for trinkets such as doll clothes, or dress up jewelry for girls, etc…the possibilities are endless!).
Voila! There you have it! Isn’t that adorable?!
…and look at how nice and clean our shelf is .. J
So there you have it! A creative fun way to organize and display all of your furry friends!
