Our Toy Rotation System
I’ll admit it. I’m a pack rat. It is hard for me to get rid of useful things. This includes toys. Unless they are completely broken or totally annoying, my tendency is to hang on to them.
The result is a larger-than-average amount of toys. Grandparents and other friends and relatives have been pretty generous with us so we haven’t even bought most of them. We also end up with more toys than some families have because we have toys to please both girls and boys. And since we’re not sure if if we done having kids, we’re hanging on to younger kid toys even as Kai outgrows them.
In our old house, most of our toys fit in the closet. I had high shelves on which to place things that weren’t currently in use, but no clear system for rotating through them. The kids could see them, so they would randomly ask for them, and I would just make them put something else up if they took something down. A lot of toys were on low shelves in the closet, meaning the kids had access to a lot of stuff and got bored of it.
When we moved into our new house a year ago, I decided it was finally time to implement a better system. Each family’s space and toys are different, but here’s what works for us (maybe it will give you an idea too!):
After deciding on certain toys that would always be out (for us this was the kitchen and play food, some dinosaurs and toy cars, musical instruments, pretend tools, the train set, our stuffed animals, and a few miscellaneous items), I divided everything else into four groups. One thing that was nice for me at the time was I did this just after moving when everything had been in boxes or bins anyway, so there was no feeling from the kids of “3/4 of our toys just disappeared!”
I tried to have at least one toy (or set of toys) from a couple different categories in each of the four groups. Each rotation group has a different set of blocks (yes, we really have four different sets of blocks!), a “preschool play” toy (these include a farm set, a set of baby doll stuff, a doctor set and a set of little people toys), a “large vehicle” (like a toddler-sized train and a little people dump truck and fire truck), and a set of “small pretend” toys that can be used in our doll house (my little ponies, tiny ponies and princesses, the actual doll house set, and our barbie dolls). There are also a few miscellaneous toys in each set.
We store the toys that are not currently in use in our porch.
A lot of the toys for each rotation group are in one of three large tubs:
The fourth large tub holds baby toys (I like to have them close by for guests). In this picture the doll house is in the porch because Madeline said she would rather have the baby doll bed set up for the whole time the baby doll rotation is out, and there is not space for both things!
The “small pretend” sets each have their own bin on this shelving unit on the other side of the porch, along with some of the other items that don’t fit in the large bins.
The kids are really good about not just heading out to the porch and taking stuff that is not currently “in rotation.” We do end up on occasion rotating the “small pretend” sets separately from everything else, and I also try and be really nice about letting guests get out stuff that isn’t currently out as long as they help put it back when they are done.
We started out rotating once a week and that was almost too often. It didn’t seem that the kids had gotten their full “play” out of a group of toys in that period of time. Once every two to three weeks is pretty ideal for my kids. I’ve been pretty lazy about it lately though, and I think it has been about once a month or whenever Madeline bugs me enough about it.
When I originally made the groups of toys I made a “master list” of what was in each rotation group, and numbered them one through four. We originally were just rotating through the groups in numerical order, but this somehow got messed up at one point and now we do something like 1-3-2-4…or something like that. Somehow Madeline keeps track of what we have or haven’t had out recently, and she usually helps me figure out what is supposed to be out next!
When it’s time to rotate, the kids have to first thoroughly clean up the play room so that everything that is supposed to get put away gets put away together (I do keep a small box for “spare parts” so when something is found that belongs in another rotation, I have a quick place to toss it). Once everything is put away, we take the outgoing rotation toys and pile them on the couch, then empty the contents of a new bin on the shelves. After the empty bin is filled with the old toys and brought to the porch, Mama gets some time to relax (or get work done, or write a blog post) while the kids play with the toys they haven’t seen for a few weeks or months!
We’ll probably revisit what is in each rotation group after Christmas this year. We already have a few more toys we’ve gotten in the past year that haven’t made it into a rotation group, and I’m sure we’ll get more this Christmas.

























