made: Getting organized {toys}

I was having this little issue. It looked a little like THIS:

The toy area. Ugh. I hate this area. Our rental home has a unique set up, our kitchen has a wide open area (the toy/computer area) and the adjoining room is the dining room/living room. It's a perfectly fine set up. Except these toys don't clean themselves up. And if you are 2, and you have ONE toy out, you need at least a dozen toys out. And if I admit anything, today I will admit that I am a parenting failure about having my son clean up his messes.

*I should add, that in about 3 months we will be bringing home a new baby. And that means this mother {this pregnant mother} needs to get off her keester and start getting ready for this new baby. I have done NOTHING (other than the knit sweater and baby caccoon I've shown you.) So my sewing room/spare bedroom will soon become a bedroom for a child. (Is it wrong to say I'm upset about this, and have considered having them share a room so I could keep my sewing room?!) I realize I'm lucky to have had it soooo good these last couple of months!

Anyway, knowing we have changes in store, I decided the mess had to go.

I started by emptying the entire bookshelf. (ugh!)

I sorted through the toys. Some now have a new home in our basement, to be saved for a rainy day. I also brought the shelf around to create a sort of "wall" in hopes of containing some of the mess...it sort of is working.

This is the $9 I bought myself at Target last Black Friday. It is AMAZING. I wouldn't pay more for it, but my son can use it (and LOVES it!) and it does the job when you have a small mess. It's a glorified dust buster, in case you were wondering.

I then sorted through the toys, the ones in the upper right corner are art supplies that require parental supervision (yes I'm a control freak!)

At the point above, I was left with THIS mess on my kitchen island:

These are the toys that now live downstairs in our basement.

I added cute labels onto the baskets. (Not to throw him under the bus, but my husband would just throw ALL the toys back into a bin/basket and say he cleaned, which I feel was only minimally helpful because sometimes a 2 year old just wants to play with trucks and then every other toy comes out to take out the trucks...)