Organizing Puzzles

We use the Ikea Trofast storage system, also. I put the puzzles up where our son can't reach them - but knows where they are and will ask to play with them. I just make sure we put them back when he is done.

what kind of puzzles are these? jigsaw or wooden puzzles? I took my son's jigsaw puzzles (mostly the ones for which the boxes are broken)... I put each puzzle's pieces in a large ziploc bag and labeled it with a sharpie (which puzzle it was + how many pieces) and then I cut up the box so that I could take the picture of the puzzle on the box and put that in the bag too (so you know what you are making). I also numbered each puzzle for instance Sesame street is puzzle #1 and I marked the back of each sesame street puzzle piece with 1 just in case my son opened up 5 puzzles and all the pieces were mixed up, then clean up would be easier. I just put all those ziploc bags with the individual puzzles in each bag into a plastic storage bin and then we have puzzles just in one place.

sorry .. sounds more complicated than it actually is :)

Aarti.

You can buy wooden organizers for puzzles, like this: http://www.discountschoolsupply.com/Product/ProductDetail...

If the toys are stored somewhere he can't get to them on his own, you can use 2 gallon ziploc bags to hold pretty big-sized puzzles and other toys with small pieces. Not all stores carry that size, but you can find them online.

I currently keep puzzles in the smaller size Ikea bins in our Trofast system, but I just stack them assembled on top of one another. (but current preschooler is less messy than my first preschooler was!)

I just started putting pieces in plastic bags and cheap(dollar store) plasticwear, and putting them all away together so that I can control what my son has out.

Hope that helps!