Organizing Joel's Toys

Joel's bedroom is TINY. It isn't even a bedroom. It's 2 bookshelves backed up to his bed in a corner of the livingroom. If I include the steps and the built in shelving cabinet - his room is a whopping 7 1/2 feet deep and 5 1/2 feet long. And his bed is in that space too - toddler sized, with a built in dresser system - but will eventually have to remove the dresser portion and put the longer mattress on the bed, which should serve until he is 8 or 9.

But his toys are driving me nuts.

Right now they are stacked and stacked and stacked upwards in this built in area. A mirror is on the back wall, a smoked brown with gold designs all over it - UGLY. I would gladly give it to anybody who wants to remove it.

This upper space is 18 inches deep, 60 inches tall, and approx. 48 inches wide (depends on whether you measure the front or the back or the top or the bottom - it's not square!)



The current arrangement is really not working - since he has ended up with things that don't stack well. Or he wants to play with the item at the VERY BOTTOM of the stack. Each box contains a different type of toy and is labeled. He also has some Lincoln Logs in storage.

The grey box holds his train set - a hand me down from Vannan with a few new items. He has a few Blue's Clues games from Christmas, some puzzles that he has recently become interested in doing. A few types of blocks.

Books are in a little shelf to the right of the built in area. Above the book shelf is a little 2 shelf with pegs where we hang his bags and set his trinkets and a few of my little lambs that he likes.

Mostly we have Little People on the bottom - lots of tractors, trucks, and trains. Most of these sets are from the girls - as Vannan had not outgrown them when Joel was born. He loves playing with them - but they take a lot of room.

I would like to be able to rotate the stuff up above with the stuff down below easier - but the blocks need their boxes and Little People won't stack! Hmmm....

So there is my delima.
I have wire shelves - but cannot mount them with the mirror there.
I do not know how to safely remove the mirror. And for vision reasons - do not care to attempt it.
I do not have the money to buy shelving or very many different boxes.

This morning I did think about using egg crates or something like that - but wonder if they would sit right or be too bulky - and I don't think I could come up with more than 3. Plus the bigger box would not slide into them ... at which point I decided that it might not work after all....

The plastic boxes are 16 in deep, 11 wide, and 10 in high. The grey box is 20 x 13 x 14 inches. I would be more than happy to downsize the train box and use a few smaller boxes for sets like his Word Whammer from Leapfrog that only uses half of a box.

Anybody have any suggestions.