Around our house we've been dealing with a pesky little problem lately.  By little, I'm referring to all of the tiny little toys my daughter likes to collect.  The littlest pet shop animals, beads, rocks, polly pocket, squeakies, etc...  The smaller, the better.  These types of toys can keep her occupied for hours, but they're also a disaster come clean up time.  I am constantly stepping on them or finding them under the couch and in every corner of the house.  For a while, I would just give her any little empty boxes I would come across (e.g., egg cartons), but eventually those boxes took over her room and were beginning to drive me nuts.

I needed a solution for the mess and fast.  My first thought was this fun and bright storage system from The Land of Nod:

I loved it, but had a feeling the little toys would still be hard to organize in those larger boxes.  I needed something with small little compartments, yet big enough to hold all of her toys.  Aha!  An old card catalog file system!  I looked it up on craigslist, and sure enough found a few.  I picked this one up from a very friendly artist who lives only 5 minutes from me.

It's perfect and holds all of her toys!  It’s not quite as bright as the other option above, but the antiquey-library look to it just makes me smile.  I'm not sure we'll be able to keep all those toys organized, but I know my daughter will have fun moving all the little pieces around in the different compartments.

As a side note, the woman I bought the card catalog from has designed some awesome kids' products, even some for one of my favorite stores, The Land of Nod.  Funny coincidence, no?  You can see her designs and books at www.libbyellisdesign.com.

Happy organizing!