How to organize {like a pro} with Dollar store items – see how I updated my kids toy room!

I have a confessions to make…I am extremely disorganized!  I am going crazy being inside all day with all this snow we still have and was getting the urge to do some spring cleaning.

Here is how my mind works – if I don’t have a specific place to put something, it doesn’t get put away.  I just forget about it (ask Mark and he will tell you).  I think the kids have taken after me, they DO NOT put things away.  Ever since Mark quit his job, we have finally had time to get things done around our house.  We have been using our dining room as our kids play room and decided to turn it back into a dining room since we now have time to have people over for dinner.  We also have this strange back room that didn’t really have a purpose other than storage room/garbage overflow room/anything else that was thrown back there.  We decided to change that into the kids toy room and I needed some help to get it organized; but we are on a tight budget so I needed to get creative.

Here is what the dining room/play room looked like before.  It was completely a mess!  See that back doorway? That is the room that we turned into the toy room.  I will also be showing you what we are doing to re-decorate our dining room later on this month.  It’s been a work in progress!

Here is what the back room looked like before. You can see how it is a mess!  Yes that is garbage (we make a LOT of garbage in this house and this was the night before garbage day.)

I went over to my Dollar Tree store and picked up some organizing supplies.  I got about 15 organizing bins, a package of clothespins, a clothesline, and a few other odds and ends to complete my goal.

Here is the after picture of the back room.

MUCH BETTER! I spent just under $40.00 in supplies to organize entire room.  I spent $2o on an inexpensive rug from an overstock store, and the rest of the items I bought at my Dollar Tree.

I had an old shelf that I put back there plus I got rid of about 4 bags of toys that the kids didn’t play with anymore.  I organized the bins into like items and labeled them so that people know how to clean them up.

I organized all of their craft supplies into the green/red/blue snap top bins.  Then some of their books and toys on the upper shelves.

I had this strange corner that was never used, so I screwed in some of the red bins right into my wall for coloring bins for my kids.  All 3 of my older kids now have their own coloring bins complete with crayons and their coloring books.  This way they can put them back easily themselves.

I found these cute little tins and divided up the crayons so that everyone has their own crayon container.  I put one of these into each of their coloring bins.

I used the clothesline and clothespins to hang up some of the kids artwork. I never know where to put their artwork, so now I have a place to display it.  I kept my 4 year old daughter busy by giving her the job to color the clothespins with markers. It kept her busy for about an hour!

I can even close the curtains to hide all the toys in case someone is coming over and I don’t want them to see the mess!  Let’s face it, once the kids start playing in here, it will NOT look this clean.  Do you remember my Pinterest Depression post?

I LOVE the way everything turned out and for under $40.00 and I could not be happier!  There are so many different kinds of organizing bins at Dollar Tree you can see a lot of them online but it depends on your store what they have in stock.

Next onto that dining room! I am doing some pretty cool stuff in there and can’t wait to share it with you!

I received all of my organizing supplies at Dollar Tree for this project and spent just under $20.00!! This post was underwritten by Dollar Tree.  All opinions are my own.  

Find out more about products you can use to organize your home with Dollar Tree on their website, on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.