P’Kolino Colorful Toy Bins

Many of my dedicated readers will immediately recognize the logo above and of course the name of The Shelving Store. I am so privileged to be able to work with such a great sponsor and review so many of their useful products. I am back again, to tell you about another great product that has multiple uses and will help your kids stay organized. I know January is typically a month for renewed promises or resolutions, and most revolve around changes that will better our lives. Getting organized, getting healthy, setting career goals and much more. I think getting organized not only has to do with the significance of the start of a new year, but also in response to the deluge of holiday gifts that must be integrated into a household that may already be packed full of stuff. The best thing I can tell you, is to go through the stuff that is overwhelming and decide what you really need, donate the rest and trash the junk. Same goes for our kids, they can easily be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of toys and games, that it actually makes them frustrated. How many of you have toy boxes filled with toys that your kids don’t even look at, except when dumping them on the floor?

I was recently at a birthday party for my 4-year-old son’s friend. I was totally amazed at my friend’s house. She had just about every toy imaginable, but she was so organized, and it was not just for the party. She admits she has OCD and cannot sleep if everything is not in place. In fact, I could see her struggling not to want to clean up while a tribe of 4 and 5-year-old kids took over her house. Now, I was really impressed because it was not a huge home and yet it seemed to have plenty of room for the multitude of toys. As I interacted with the other moms and kids, I was still thinking of how my home that is very large and filled with multiple play rooms and areas for the kids to play, looked like a tornado hit most of the time. My over thinking brain needed to find out what was going on. I soon did as I realized in one of the rooms that would normally be the living room or living room, dining room combination she had basically set up as a large playroom for the kids. There was no adult furniture except for a grand piano, a small computer desk and a bookcase that held some toys neatly on shelves. The rest of the room was geared toward play and had a large train table, multiple bins of cars and trucks which were now empty and strewn about the room, race tracks, some ride on toys, and the walls were covered with the children’s artwork.

Her boys are about the same ages as my youngest 2 children and I totally laughed when my son Ethan came into the kitchen to show me this large Fisher Price Amazing Animal Train that he thought was the greatest thing. The funny thing was, we had the same train but he probably never saw it together like that and with all the animals in it. She had all the cars attached with a string so they could not come apart and she had every one of those animals in their place. Now Ethan had this toy since he was a little baby and you can literally find those animals in every room or our house. I could not even begin to tell you where the train cars are, except that they are probably in the basement playroom somewhere.

She had a small sun room that was again filled with only kid’s things, she had a tent set up and some other toys, in the family room was the only couch in the house and she had an entertainment center and another bookcase on which all of their games were neatly stacked. There were also multiple bins of carefully sorted trucks and toys. At the time I was thinking, how does she do this? I was not alone, as the moms all sat down and asked her, exactly that question. We told tales of how our kids just love to empty toy boxes for the thrill of it. How if our games were all stacked like that we would walk into the room to see our kids with them all opened and the pieces lost, and other tales of chaos from mothers like me. She laughed and explained again how she is OCD and really is constantly putting things away and making sure every piece of every game was accounted for. Her older sister was there and she was laughing and telling me she was trying to keep tabs on everything because she knew how her sister was. This woman was tracking down every Elefun net and butterfly and rounding them up.

My friend did admit that her children were very neat by nature and were also stressed if things were in disarray. She told me that one day she was playing a game on the floor with her youngest son, when she looked at the clock and saw it was time to pick up her older son from preschool. She left the game on the floor figuring they would play when they got home. She told me that when her older son walked in the house he immediately asked her why the game was not put away.

So I have rambled on here and you are probably wondering my point. Well, my point is that we can’t all be like that. We can try to control the chaos and try to keep things as organized as possible. I think we can also instill in our children a sense of keeping things in their place so that everything is there and ready the next time they want to play. I have been doing this with my little ones and it is really working. Yesterday, I gave Ethan a huge set of Colorforms even though I was afraid that it would soon be strewn all over. I explained to him that we needed to put everything away so that he would have it to play with again and again. Well, do you know he played with that all day, and he put every Colorform piece back on the original spaces in the large spiral bound book that you peel them off of. I am talking about even the tiniest triangles. I told him he could put them anywhere on the page but he put each color back in the exact outline of each shape. Then he packed it all in the box and he did this every time he played with it. It was a small moment of joy for me.

I know my kids love to have a special place for things and they will be more apt to put things away when it is accessible and easy for them. Like our kid’s coat closet has a coat rack on the inside of the door at their level, so even when they are too young to use the hangers they can easily put their coats and backpacks on the hooks. My sons love that they can do this.

Anyway, as I was looking over The Shelving Store’s website, I saw some P’kolino Containers that caught my eye. First, they came in great colors and they had a hard wood lid. So when I was asked if I wanted to do another review, I requested these. I ordered green for my one son because it is his favorite color and red for my other son. When they arrived I was really impressed. They were very good quality. Many times you see bins like this and within days they are cracking from simple use. These bins were thick and tough and made for kids. The tops were great, sturdy wood, smooth edges and they fit on top in the recessed edges and did not slide. When I saw them in person, I realized just how useful they were. While I had originally thought to review them as bins to hold the kids toys, I now saw them as much more. They were very portable and would be great for vacations where the kids could put their special toys in them and also have a type of lap desk they could use in the car. I saw that these would be wonderful for them to use on the floor as a perfect little table where they could assemble puzzles, work on workbooks, draw, play with Play-Doh on and a multitude of other activities. Things could be stored in the bin and then it could open like a desk and taken out to play on the wood top. My kids loved this idea and will carry them from their bedroom to the family room and back again. I really love them and I don’t think they are just for kids because I have found they make a great laptop desk if you are doing some work from your bed and you can have your laptop perched on the wood top and supplies in the bin. Would work great for tweens and teens too.

So if you are looking for a bin that has multiple uses, something that will appeal to your kids, can be purchased in your child’s favorite color and even function as a workstation for adults, then check out the P’kolino colorful toy bins.

P’kolino products meet or exceed US, EU, and Canadian safety standards. Independently Tested for durability, toxicity, mechanical safety, regulatory standards, use and abuse and age grading. These sturdy storage bins integrate into many of P’Kolino’s products for added organization. They can be easily removed and replaced with another play kit for a simple way to change the activity and to organize your child’s toys. Small enough to fit on most shelves and large enough to hold art supplies, coloring books, blocks or small toys. They are also a fabulous storage system even if you don’t have another P’kolino piece to use them in. For a fabulous color statement in a playroom, bedroom or office, stack various colored bins on top of one another.

The Shelving Store is sponsoring a giveaway on Mommy Ramblings. One lucky blog reader will win a P’Kolino Colorful Toy Bin in their color choice. Thank you to The Shelving Store for the review bins and for this wonderful giveaway on Mommy Ramblings!!! Open to US residents.