Kids Playroom Ideas – Budget Friendly

We’ve been fortunate enough to have a playroom basically since Millie grew out of her crib. The girls really enjoy sharing a room which means we have extra space for a dedicated playroom. I’ve recently gotten requests to share some kids’ playroom ideas so today I’m sharing how we organize our playroom, why it works for us, and some additional ideas that can work in any space.

Instead of each child having their own bedrooms, the girls share a room, and we use our spare bedroom as the girls’ playroom. We had a similar setup in our old house but I prefer it even more in this house because it keeps all of the toys out of our living room. On occasion the girls will bring a few toys down to play in the living room or a project to work on at the table but overall, they keep their stuff in the playroom. This makes cleaning up much easier and keeps our downstairs looking presentable most of the time.

Kids Budget Friendly Playroom Ideas

Budget-friendly playroom shelving and storage

Let’s get into those playroom organization ideas. For this space, I knew I wanted a large bookshelf with baskets storage. I found this option of organizing toys to be very affordable and stylish. I love the unfinished wood look but it can also easily be painted. This particular bookshelf is very customizable so you can buy different pieces to fit your organizational needs. We purchased just two sections of the IVAR shelving to create this custom playroom shelving. It’s an affordable piece of shelving that was fairly easy to put together. We could have easily fit one more section on this wall and if we need more space in the future I may add another section. I also love using these eight cubby storage organizers like what I’ve used for living room toy storage.

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Using Baskets and Bins to organize toys

These shelves are the primary storage space in the room. We’ve organized the girls’ things using baskets and bins. I’m a huge fan of baskets and bins, storing like items, and making it easy for the kids to put things back in their place. On the bottom shelf in the larger milk crate baskets, store toys like Barbies, play food, and baby dolls and their accessories.

In the slightly smaller rope baskets, we keep things like Magnet Tiles, blocks, and smaller figurines like Peppa Pig.

Label Everything

One important solution for keeping some things organized in this playroom is the use of a label maker. I love my label maker and use it all around our house. I especially love it for adding labels in the girls’ playroom. In addition to adding labels on clear containers like these, you can also add labels to tags for baskets as a way to keep those items organized as well.

Keep like items together

We use this four cubby shelf as a little shop of sorts. We do a lot of pretend play so there are many tea parties. We play a lot of restaurant or ice cream parlor. I keep those items that get the most use out on the shelf so that they are more easily accessible instead of diving through the play food basket.

Organizing art supplies

On the other side of the room, we have a small art station set up. This ALEX drawer unit is used to store all the tiny toys in our old playroom. Now it stores some art supplies such as paper, loose parts, etc as well as miscellaneous toys (read: happy meal toys or other freebies my kids just cannot part with).

Millie does “school” at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I use this space to set up an invocation we have for the day plus whatever tools or learning materials we might need. We recently did an ocean unit and used these seashells with letters – I love them so much I’m keeping them out year-round.

We also have a little book ledge that I use to highlight books that reference whatever topic we happen to be discussing that week. We also have art supplies at the ready in this caddy that I found at Hobby Lobby.

An affordable art display

And, is it even a playroom if you do not have some artwork on display? This is the easiest way to display artwork. I hung a few feet of ribbon with a thumbtack and we clip masterpieces to the ribbon using clothespins. It’s too easy.

In Conclusion

These kids’ playroom ideas work for us. I love this system because it can be utilized in any space. You definitely do not need a dedicated room to have an organized play space. You can throw up these shelves in a corner of your living room, a wide hallway, or in your kid’s bedroom and have a successfully organized situation for toys. We did something similar in a previous home – see our living room toy organization here. One thing you’ll notice that we don’t have out in the open is larger play items such as a dollhouse or play kitchen. We had a play diner before we moved and it didn’t make it here. With Millie already at 4, we opted not to get another one. We do however have a few playhouses that the girls adore. We store those in the closet. Since this is technically a bedroom it has a sliding door closet. We keep their Barbie Malibu house on one side and their Peppa Pig house on the other. When it’s just one of them playing, they usually just leave the doors open to the closet and sit there comfortably and play. When they both want to play or have friends over they typically bring the house to the rug for more space. This works well for us.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments – what are some ways you keep your kids’ toys and things wrangled?

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