Clean Sweep: Sydney mum shares ‘lifesaver’ toy tidying-up solution
One mum was sick of finding toys everywhere so she came up with a cheap way to keep things neat — and you’ll never step on a piece of Lego again.
Welcome to Clean Sweep, news.com.au’s fortnightly home organisation series featuring exclusive advice on how to declutter your home direct from Aussies who have spruced their way to success.
You can consider yourself in a very lucky minority if you’ve never felt the crippling pain that comes with stepping on a piece of Lego while barefoot.
The discomfort that comes with finding an errant toy imprinting itself onto your sole (or soul, if it’s the fifth time that day) is an all-too-familiar feeling for most parents — and usually means your child’s toys aren’t packed away.
According to Sydney mum Christine Krkach, constantly finding daughter Mia’s toys scattered across their living room was “driving me mad”.
The professional declutterer scoured Instagram for home organisation ideas for toys, but when she couldn’t find one that worked, she had to come up with her own solution.
Now Mrs Krkach has shared her ingenious hack for keeping children’s toys out of sight and tidy — and you’ll never step on a piece of Lego again.
For this instalment of Clean Sweep, Mrs Krkach has opened her home to news.com.au for a tour to showcase the organisation hacks she uses at home. You can watch them in the video above.
‘REALLY CHEAP IDEA TO STORE TOYS’
Mrs Krkach’s passion for home organisation began when the small space she and her husband moved into after they married meant that things needed to be kept tidy and to a minimum.
In 2016 she founded her decluttering service, and she now helps families across Sydney get on top of junk and keep things tidy.
Since welcoming their first child, a daughter Mia, last year, Mrs Krkach acknowledges it’s impossible for things to stay neat always.
But she found herself frustrated by how hard it was to keep Mia’s toys tidy by storing them in a big basket.
“I would really struggle because around dinner time she would pull out this basket and there would be little pieces of toys everywhere, all over the house,” she said.
“I would vacuum and pick it up, it was driving me mad. When we went to go play it was taking so long to even find all the pieces.”
Getting rid of the toy basket, Mrs Krkach purchased pot lid organisers from Ikea which cost $9.999 and see-through pencil cases in varying sizes off eBay starting at just $1.15 each.
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Inside the drawers of her TV cabinet she packed smaller toys into corresponding cases together, stowing them vertically in the pot lid organiser, which can be adjusted by size.
Any larger toys are stored in the bottom drawers.
“She sits down with me, we play together, she picks what she wants, we pack together and then she picks the next one,” Mrs Krkach explained.
“It probably takes me less than 30 seconds to pack them up. And then we get to play with the next one and all the pieces are there. It’s really been a lifesaver using such a really cheap idea to store toys.”
Better yet, Mrs Krkach said the toy solution became a useful way of teaching her 16-month-old daughter to pack things away from an early age.
“She seems to think it’s fun to pick up all the pieces and put it away, so it’s good, I’ll take it while it lasts,” Mrs Krkach said with a laugh.
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HOME ORGANISATION: DO’S AND DON’TS
Chop chop in the kitchen
Since becoming a mum, Mrs Krkach has taken meal prepping to the next level and spends an hour every weekend chopping and washing all her food following the weekly supermarket shop.
“I have a young baby who doesn’t sleep very well, so I have to be super organised and make sure all her food and stuff and all our food is ready,” she said.
“If we’ve had a bad day or if I’ve been stuck in the car trying to get her to sleep, I know as soon as we get out everything is cut, ready to go. I literally just cook it, huge timesaver there.”
After finding containers were taking up too much space, Mrs Krkach got ride of most of them and uses reusable Stasher bags available from Howards Storage World.
On the bottom shelf she bags all prewashed and precut food and stacks vertically in the clear bags, with fresh fruit washed and kept in long clear containers from Kmart on the second shelf.
On the top shelf, Mrs Krkach keeps any leftovers and food she is thawing out in the few plastic containers she still uses, meaning everything is easily accessible at all times.
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Get rid of stuff you don’t like
Like other declutterists, Mrs Krkach believes less is more, and holding onto something you don’t like in the hope you might use it one day only leads to more waste as it can hide important items.
“A lot of people feel guilty throwing things out, but the reality is you’re no going to use something that you don’t like if you’ve bought something else that you do like,” she said.
When it comes to containers, get it right
With so much variety out there, Mrs Krkach says we shouldn’t be settling for just any old containers — and you should always make sure you know your measurements.
“People want to get organised and sometimes they might go out and buy a simple set of containers,” she said.
“But there’s so many options out there with organising these days, with compartments that separate things. And it obviously makes your life so much easier when you can see things rather than just dumping it into the one box.”
You can follow Christine Krkach on Instagram or find out more about her work on her website
Got a good home organisation or cleaning story to share? Email Clean Sweep at hannah.paine1@news.com.au
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