We recently moved our couch around again (are we the only ones that are constantly rearranging our furniture?) and it caused us to a bit of reorganization. A big part of the motivation for moving the couch in the first place was to get better access to the shelves that Eric put in under our stairs.
You see, having kids seems to automatically cause an influx of crazy amounts of kid stuff. Between presents from from grandparents and friends plus all the little things that we as the girls parents just can't resist picking up for them we seem to have a ton of stuff! Let's face it, shopping for kids is fun! There are a ton of beautifully designed kids products and it is so hard not to go overboard at every opportunity. We have quite a collection of toys, games, puzzles and art supplies and since we ant the main living space to feel like it belongs to everyone, not just the grown ups, we store a lot of the better kid items in the living room.
It used to cause quite a bit of clutter but we found the magic solution to keeping the clutter under control and making the room a snap to clean, storage buckets! I know this isn't a revolutionary new idea or anything but they aren't something that I ever used in my decorating before I had kids and they have made a huge difference in the look and feel of our living room.
Things like art supplies are pretty well organized but for the most part the storage buckets have no rhyme or reason to them. They just house all the random toys that end up floating around the living room. When I need to clean up it takes me literally 2 minutes to scoop everything up and toss it in a bucket. Our kids are young enough that they rarely look for a specific toy so the fact that they are totally unorganized doesn't really matter. Plus Echo enjoys digging through the buckets just to see what's in them, it's like a treasure hunt to her!
We have the same system going in Echo's room and it makes it so easy to clean! Seeing how well it worked in her space really made me want to try it in the other rooms in the house. We have the most buckets going in the living room since that's where we mostly hang out but having a single bucket in the dining room, kitchen and kids bathroom has proved really useful too. Some of our buckets are prettier than others but they all help bring a sense of calm and order to our house that just wouldn't be possible otherwise. I feel like the living room is cleaner than it's been in years and it makes me wonder why we didn't do this from the get go. Hopefully it will keep things feeling neat and tidy as our kid stuff continues to grow!
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