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A Brilliant Space-Saving Storage Idea For Games and Puzzles + FREE Printable Labels

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For those of us whose houses are overrun with board games and kids’ puzzles … well, this one’s for you.

When we moved into our home five years ago, we immediately turned our formal living room into a playroom for our two kids, now ages 8 and 4.

So one might assume we have all the room in the world to store an endless supply of toys, right?

Wrong.

We have two kids who are different ages and genders, meaning that their ideas of “fun” activities and the toys they like vary quite a bit.

The result? We’ve got a very full playroom that could sometimes be mistaken for an FAO Schwartz (with more modern decor, of course).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining at all that my children have oodles of things to play with — I’m super grateful for that.

I just have to have a plan for organizing it all.

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Our latest dilemma: Storing puzzles and board games

Both of the kids love puzzles and board games, but anyone who owns a Melissa & Doug puzzle knows how huge the boxes are. They take up so much space!

I figured there had to be a better way to store all these puzzles and games without buying yet another piece of furniture.

Could I somehow manage to ditch the bulky boxes?

Turns out that’s exactly what I wound up doing.

And I am completely amazed at how well it’s working out.

Here’s what I did to better organize our puzzles and board games.

The bonus? This organization hack is also a HUGE space saver!

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Problem solved: Mesh zip-top pouches and pretty labels

To better organize our games and puzzles I turned to no other than — yep, you guessed it — Amazon Prime. (As a working mom of two Amazon Prime is a godsend for me on the regular. Who doesn’t love two-day shipping?!)

And I found this set of colorful mesh zip-top pouches — there are 8 in each pack — for under $10!

Grab your own set of colorful mesh zip-top pouches right here.

how_to_organize_puzzles_games

These felt like the perfect way to store most of our puzzles and some of our games, like memory games, card games, and games with small pieces (think Candyland and Chutes & Ladders), and even LEGOs.

kids puzzle games storage ideas

The only thing I didn’t love about the mesh zip-top pouches is the fact that the labels are so … boring.

So I made my own, of course.

storage organization labels kids toys

Much better, right?

For the puzzles that I decided to store in the mesh pouches, I went ahead and cut the image of the completed puzzle off of the box and stored it in the mesh pouch with the puzzle itself.

This way, the kids are still able to see what the finished product should look like as they’re working on putting the pieces together.

organize puzzles games

Bonus: Grab your FREE printable organization labels

Since the bags themselves are colorful, I decided to make simple striped labels that I could write on — and I chose the neutral gray and white color scheme because they looked good with all the colorful pouches.

storage organization labels kids toys

They’re a little bit jazzier than the plain ones that came with the pouches, don’t ya think?

I’m sharing the labels with you so you can download your own set too. I designed the labels so that the sizing works specifically with the mesh pouches I purchased.

Just pop over to my library of free printables to grab them, and get to organizing!

Click the image below to download your set of labels!

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Thanks so much, mama!

Wow -- this small-space organizing idea is totally genius! Great idea on how to store kids games and puzzles. #organization #getorganized #kidstoys #playroom #toystorage

 

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