DIY Puzzle Organization

We love wooden toys in our house.  We especially love wooden puzzles.  They are usually clunky (less of a choking hazard), durable, easy to manipulate and pretty to look at.



Noah has already shown great interest in the puzzles we have at our house and me, being a Montessori teacher, just loves beauty and craftsmanship in a good old manmade learning material.  Noah has mastered most of our 3 piece puzzles all on his own and he has recently been working really hard at getting the hang of some of his other, larger puzzles as well.

That's great right?

But there are also a major downside to these clunky, wooden puzzles.  They can take up SO much space and often times don't fit into book shelves correctly or you can only fit one or two per shelf, which can be a problem if you are like me and have limited shelf availability already.  And while they can often times be fitted vertically onto a bookshelf, this means all the pieces will fall all over the place and look really untidy.  I don't know about you, but I can't handle that.  When I clean toys up... I want them to look, well, orderly.

Anyways, I did a ton of research on the internet and the only real solution I could find was some very expensive puzzle cabinet and shelves, which while they look great, they take up more space than I am willing to give and they are again... pricey.

Some DIY people suggested taking fedex boxes and taping them together to make your own puzzle shelves.  This sounded great except I could see if getting torn up pretty quickly by mr. destructo.  I also read another DIYer use a dish drainer as a puzzle shelf, although it did take some bending and shape modification on her part.

Well, I just happened to come across my solution while at the 99cent store the other day and seriously it has worked out fantastic for us. I am still so excited about it that I wanted to share my tip with you guys.

The materials are easy to find.  I used a 99cent vertical dish rack, hot glue and some felt.  The total cost of this project was less than $2!

All I did was cut a piece of felt to fit the back of the puzzle and hot glue three sides (left, right and bottom) to the back of the puzzle.  THAT'S IT!  If you want it to be extra fancy, you can add a smaller strip of felt to the top of the puzzle and make a sort of flap for the pouch.  I did this on one of the puzzles and while it looked great, I didn't think it was that much more helpful in keeping the pieces inside the pouch.

Anyways, this DIY is great because it's really not that permanent, so eventually you can take the felt off and store it away another way without damaging the wood if this DIY is just not to your liking.  Also, the felt might stretch out over time and you may need to replace it OR if you have a rough dude like Noah, you may have to add more glue now and again because he pulls the pieces out of the pouch with a little too much force.  

The end result is great because all of the pieces fit snugly into their pouches and then the puzzle can be stacked vertically for easy access.  Noah likes to pull all the puzzles off the shelf, take the pieces out of the pouches and then put them back in again.  He thinks it's hilariously awesome.  

And please don't think that this is ALL of Noah's toys...  He has tons!
This is just a little corner that I tidied up for the pics... behind me was the truckload of toys that Noah was rolling around in. *sigh*