How to Keep Your Sanity without Really Trying

This past weekend, I attended the fifth birthday party of a friend’s child. When I arrived, he and his wife were a little frazzled, dealing with kids and the stuff they had left lying around: they were having difficulty walking anywhere without crushing toys or stubbing toes. What my friends really needed were some handy kid-friendly storage solutions from Children’s Furniture Select.

It reminded me of a long distance telephone call I had received from my friend Barbara, when her daughter had turned two. The first words I heard after picking up the phone were, “I have a living room floor again!” Her daughter had been given a toy box for her birthday but Barbara felt it was her own personal gift from the gods. Up until then, she didn’t know how she had managed without one.

Inspired by the toy box, which stayed in the living room, Barbara found ways to organize her daughter’s room so that hopefully (this was the theory) kid-related clutter would remain in her child’s room. Clear storage bins, like the KidKraft See-Thru Bin allowed her daughter to see what was stored where. Casters were a must-have feature, so that it could be wheeled into the living room when needed and back out of sight into her daughter’s bedroom after playtime was over.

Barbara has passed her passion for reading onto her children, especially her daughter. Although they hadn’t totally buried her living room floor like the toys had done, books were another source of clutter that needed containing. Resembling the Young America by Stanley Madison Bookcase, she wanted bookcases in her daughter’s room that could be added to when needed.

But her flash of genius became evident when she put two clothes trees, one for each of her children, in the hallway by the door. They still don’t actually hang up their things when they enter the house, but now Barbara doesn’t have to walk as far to the cupboard to put their coats away when they come home.