Toy storage

Pi's toy collection is forever growing. Most of it is junk, but even junk needs to be stored somewhere (if not in the bin).

My best solution (besides throwing it into a cupboard and closing the door *really* fast), is to get some bookshelves. We bought ours from Nittori, for about 1000yen each. They sell them at all sorts of places- furniture stores like Nitori and Ikea, Large Aeon stores, and home improvement stores- like Daiyu8 or Beaver Tozan. They all seem to be priced at about the 1000yen mark- give or take a few hundred yen.

From Nitori we bought some really cheap boxes to go inside, they are kind of fabric covered cardboard, and were 999yen for the set of three (including tax). Nicer wicker ones are about  500-700yen each. We have some nicer ones for upstairs but Pi's toys these are fine.

It is really easy to sort Pi's toys into sections with these boxes. At first they were sorted perfectly, but he loves pulling out several boxes at a time and mixing up the contents, so except for the PLARAIL (which we make sure stays in one box) they rest got a bit mixed up. Pi can reach into all the boxes which is good, yet the boxes they can be tidied and contents concealed easily. 

From Daiso you can get boxes for 108yen that make good mini storage boxes. You can see the blue bus box and the red truck below that were bought from Daiso and are used for his Mama Goto (playing house) toys. 

The big police box in the back is awesome. It is hard enough that kids can sit on the lid (the lid is not shown in this picture), and can be neatly stacked or tucked away. We put the little Daiso boxes in the big box to keep things tidy. The big police box was about 2000yen. We bought ours from a small variety store, but I have seen similar at Akachan Honpo.