Ideas for Storing Wooden Kid Puzzles

Sterilite Clip Boxes are quickly becoming my go-to storage box for a variety of things around the house. I’ve now used them to organize Lego Sets, bathroom drawers, and crafts in my craft room; and I’ve recently discovered both the “Deep” and “Large” sizes are ideal for holding wooden kid puzzles. Sometimes it doesn’t occur to me to share these smaller organizing hacks with you all, but then I remember these quick and easy solutions are sometimes the most popular! So while I work on a few other projects behind the scenes, I thought I would pop in to share this easy solution with you, as well as some other ideas for storing wooden kid puzzles! Let’s hop to it!

Oh…wooden puzzles. They are so cute and so fun and the kids just love them, but man can they be a pain to store and keep together.

With lots of pieces, pegs, and chunky profiles, there aren’t a whole lot of ways to store them so that they can be easily played with but also so that their pieces don’t constantly go missing or get littered all over the floor. Admittedly, we don’t have a ton of these types of puzzles (what you see here is what we have), but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fighting to keep them together for years.

Way back when, when Henry was first gifted a set of 3 wooden puzzles, I made these cute little “Puzzle Pouches” to hold them. They had clear front pockets (so you could easily see what was inside) and snap-tabbed tops (so kids could easily get in and out). The puzzles slid right in, and the pieces never fell out. Case in point, 5 years later, we still have all the pieces to all three puzzles!

Psssst: If you love this idea too but don’t want to make your own, these inexpensive zipper pouches work almost exactly the same way and you can get them in a variety of colors!!

Large Zipper Pouches

Since, sewing with bias tape is about my least favorite thing to do EVER, I never made additional pouches to keep up with our collection of puzzles. As a result, we had some puzzles (and their pieces) constantly floating around the playroom while others were neatly tucked away. So when I recently overhauled our playroom organization systems, I decided it was finally time to come up with a method to store ALL of our puzzles together. While I was playing Merry-Go-Bin-and-Basket, I discovered that the wooden puzzles fit PERFECTLY into an extra “Deep” Sterilite bin I had in the garage.

Not only does our entire collection fit into one bin (with room to spare!)…

…but those wands and fishing rods (that I can never seem to find a good place for) can also be thrown right in!

After a few quick labels with my Cricut and some vinyl…

…all of our puzzles now have a snazzy little home. The see-through box (and labels) help Henry see and find the puzzles easily, but the size of this box and lid keep everything corralled in a super accessible way. I just LOVE stumbling upon a storage solution that works so well!

Although our entire collection fits into one of the “Deep” bins, I wanted to mention that the “Large” size also holds the puzzles quite well…if not a little better (dimension-wise). If you need to sort puzzles by child or by type or by theme, the more shallow boxes might be worth considering!

And for anyone who is curious, these boxes stack perfectly AND fit really nicely into IKEA Kallax/Expedit shelves. This actually isn’t where we are storing our puzzle box, but since I know so many use these shelves for toy storage, I wanted to show how compatible they are! (I could have even comfortably fit one more box there!)

More Wooden Puzzle Storage Ideas!

I realize each family/child/collection is different; and while this solution is ideal for us, you might need something different (more/less, open versus closed, etc). As such, I wanted to share a few more ideas that might be worth trying if you’re struggling to store these kinds of puzzles too. Here are a few of my favorite wooden puzzle storage ideas I found around the web:

• Pretty much the most clever use of FedEx boxes I’ve ever seen!
• If you’re especially handy, of which I am not, this storage tower is pretty awesome!
• Scrapbook paper holder/sorter? Brilliant!
• And don’t overlook the real deal, although my boxes are much cheaper!

Finally, we recently were gifted a bunch of kid puzzle sets. You know the kind: 6 puzzles in a single, flimsy box. To keep the puzzles sorted out and so kids could easily get them out to play, we loaded each puzzle into smaller zipper pouches! It works great!

Zipper Pouches

So there you have it, my favorite ideas for storing wooden kid puzzles! I’d love to hear if you’ve found a wooden puzzle storage solution that is working in your home – feel free to share in the comments below! I’ve got a few things to finish up with our toy storage before I (finally) reveal it all to you; so in the meantime, I’ll meet you back here on Friday with my best tips and tricks for buying rugs online! See you then!