Someone has bought three white toy crates stacked up like a shooting challenge under the window. Someone else has a single white bench box that’s turned grey at the edges because nobody ever wipes it down before cramming a dripping wet swimming costume inside. We’re both convinced we’re winning. Neither of us has budged the other an inch in two years of trying.
The argument for white is easy. Nothingness. It fades into the background (literally) in a playroom full of fluorescent plastic instead of screaming its presence.
There’s an alternate timeline where all our toy storage matches the walls and every colour looks kind of muted and thoughtful for about eleven minutes of the day.
Usually the eleven minutes between everything being put away and someone opening the container again.
The problem with reality is that white highlights everything.
Every rogue missing lid from plastic containers that didn’t make it back on at the end of dinner. Every scrape where a scooter’s basket dragged along the floor and into the house. Someone has a lid with a fingerprint on it, we’re guessing in nutella but we’re not judging, that’s been there since last summer because the idea of sanding down and painting a lid back down is worse than living with it.
We’re also at opposite ends of the wipeable paint debate. One of us lives by the fully coated wipeable kind – spray it, wipe it, done. Pat themselves on the back for remembering every month. Someone else bought the cheaper kind with the chalk paint finish because it photographically looked better and now spends a few minutes every month touching it up with a tester pot. It’s become its own weird little monthly ritual now.
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The one thing we agree on is lids need to actually withstand a four year old climbing on them to put their shoes on. Every single morning. Without permission. Ask us how we learned that lesson with a wimpy lid that gave out after about six months. Winner of our who-can-name-the-most-expensesucks-tools-for-home-ware-game is willing to admit that here.
Amid all that, how much white should live in your white toy storage is another battle entirely.
Part of white toy storage’s appeal is peeking inside and it looking like you’ve got this sorting thing down.
Someone over here sectioned off their crates into sorted zones ages ago – animals in this one, cars in that one.
And actually maintains it. Someone else chuck it all in at bedtime and announces that ‘that’s their system’. That person’s boxes always look neater from a distance, and I don’t understand how that’s possible but don’t want to know either.
No. We haven’t agreed on answers. And we’re definitely not going to just say we have for the sake of a neatly wrapped up blog post. White toy storage is magic because it can make your life look ten times calmer than it actually is. Problem or point? You decide which depending on who’s speaking this Tuesday.
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