I am in the process of reorganzing my unfinished basement which acts as the main playroom. I have a HUGE amount of boy dress ups from 13 years of having 3 boys. My problem is organizing it all. I have it in two big bins, but when kids come to play, they end up dumping the whole thing out to find what they are looking for. It really gets out of control quickly. Does anyone have any suggestions that are not expensive?

Polly,

We have six sons ages 16 to nearly 2. Over the years we have stored up lots of dressup clothes and tried several storage methods. For the past couple of years we have had most of the clothes in medium size plastic bins by category, ie. pirate, western, army, etc. This way when the boys want to pretend a specific theme they do not have to sort through a whole huge bin. We do have one big bin for hats and miscellaneous items that don't fit the other categories. I usually have to sort through this big one a couple of times per year to help pieces find their way back with their own category. I hope others post. I'd like some more ideas, too.

Jill

We have sorted ours by using those "space bags". You can suck the air out for more efficient storage if you want or just use it as a giant ziploc. If it's western I'd probably use a big tote, because of the boots and hats. Don't want to squish the hats.

Well, my post isn't much different than the one above, but hope it helps!

Depending on your wall space... a wood accordian peg wall rack works great. It is cheep and has like 25 pegs on it. You can stretch it out long and thing or smush it back in so the pegs are in a tight zigzag. This makes a quick clean up plus it is all visual and like walking into a dressing room. I think I have seen them at linens and things or bed bath and beyond (although I just tried to pull it up on their websit and didn't find it.) I would then have a box below that has all the accessories like swords and such.