How to Organize Puzzles: Dollar Tree Bins and Plastic Sandwich Bags

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My three year old has really gotten into puzzles lately. It’s great that she’s developing a new skill and having fun along the way! However, it’s horrible how messy puzzles get and how much space each puzzle takes up to store. For my sanity, I had to come up with some rules on how to organize puzzles and how to play with them.

In the past, we have used a toy rotation system, but that’s hard when you have hundreds of little pieces that need to stay organized. Thus, a different method was in store.

Here’s how we organized her puzzles.

I first bought a ton of sandwich and quart sized plastic bags. Then, each puzzle got an appropriate sized plastic bag.

So my daughter could know which puzzle was which, I cut out the picture from the front or side of each box and taped it onto the bag. I also wrote how many pieces were in there so I’d remember. Sometimes we have time for a 24 piece puzzle only, and other times I have time to help her with a 100 piece one.

All the puzzles are then stored in a long plastic bin I got from Dollar Tree that perfectly fits underneath the cabinets in her room. As a note, we also get a lot of her puzzles from Dollar Tree. Super affordable! Here’s some pics of the storage bins:

The Rules for Putting Together Puzzles

We allow her to get out one puzzle at a time. When she finishes with it, she puts the puzzle back into the plastic bag. So far she has been great about following the rules, and we have freed up a ton of closet space! We also haven’t lost any pieces to puzzles yet. That’s just the worst!

Any other ideas how to organize puzzles? I’m still trying to figure something out for our board puzzles. My big daughter has outgrown a lot of them, but I’m looking to store them for our younger daughter soon.

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