Color Me Organized!

Generally when Hubby calls me at 5:30 pm to inform me that he will not be home for many hours, I go into a mini-panic/slight depression. I so appreciate having a second set of hands for dinner and bedtime for the girls, and I love our alone time in the evenings. Yesterday, however, when I got the call, I got an ever so small twinge of excitement. I had had a project on my mind all day that I knew I would never get done unless I was alone. So, I whipped up a frozen chicken pot pie for myself, tucked the girls in bed relatively early, and got busy.
I tend to be a pretty organized girl (at least in theory, anyway), and I like things put in their place. After a year of tweaking and the purchase of my label maker, I have finally gotten the playroom just so. However, Carter has a new genre of favorite toys that had me thrown for a loop: The Little Things; that's what we call them. Over the past year she has increasingly collected more and more small things that just haven't had a good storage spot. We'd tried different boxes and bags, but nothing seemed to be just right for containing the growing number mini-animals, dolls, and figures. As of yesterday morning, this darling mouse backpack contained The Little Things.

As you can see, this was definitely not an organized system. Buzz Lightyear laid beneath beetles and lizards which were being trampled by ponies whose families were being separated. It was not pretty and it made me a little shaky to see. When a recent vacation yielded a 12 mini dinosaurs to add to The Little Things, I knew an organizational intervention was necessary.
Yesterday morning, I set out for a trip to the Container Store. I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for, but I knew that I would know it when I saw it. I spent awhile debating between plastic and fabric containers with lids or without. As it turned out, I ended up with these these containers:

 As I left the store, I still wasn't positive that they were what I was looking for, but (as always) I knew I would just return them if they didn't work out. So once the girls Murphy was soundly sleeping, and Carter was using her 'wings' to practice 'flying' off of her bed, I got to work on my project. First I separated all The Little Things into categories and threw away all the unnecessary little accessories (how many Halloween hats do Little Ponies really need?) I knew that I wanted to create a simple system that Carter would be able to maintain. My initial thought was to use my handy-dandy label maker for each section, but I quickly realized that my darling 3 year old does not yet know how to read. So then I got this idea...
First, I took pictures of a couple items for each category:

Next, I printed each picture on my home printer and used a post-it note as a template to cut the pictures to just the right size to fit into the compartments:

Then I used my label maker to make labels for each section. Despite that fact that Carter can't read YET, I do want to help her to begin associating words with pictures:

Next, I stuck a label to each picture and covered it with clear contact paper:

Finally, I used my hot glue gun to attach the labeled pictures to the containers:

And, lastly I put all The Little Things in their appropriate compartments ... VOILA!

I am SO PLEASED with the way this organizational project turned out. The linen colored boxes make them perfect for storing on the bookshelf in Carter's pink and chocolate-colored room just above Murphy's reach (as The Little Things can be chocking hazards!) I showed Carter the boxes as soon as she woke up this morning, and she was almost as excited as I was about them!