Michelle says it was the perfect present, and just the help the family required. “We needed Melinda; we needed someone to come in and say, ‘This is how you do it,’” she says. They had tried to tackle the project on their own several times, but the mess always crept back in. “It seemed like we would get everything straightened out, but then they get in here and play one day, and it’s a disaster again.”

The basement of the Croftons’ home of 10 years began morphing into Toyland after the first set of twins, now-6-year-old Anna and Katie, were born—the first of several big surprises for the couple.

“The Lord has a sense of humor. My husband and I tried for three years to have children,” Michelle recalls. “We were told we would not be able to. Then we shifted from fertility doctors to a Christian faith-based doctor, and within two months we were pregnant naturally with twins. We said, ‘OK, we have our family.’ We thought we were done, and next thing you know, I’m pregnant again with twins.”

Gracie and Madeline came along 9 months ago, and with them came a mountain of gifts from ecstatic family members and friends to add to the already large collection of toys and clothes belonging to the older girls.

“We are well, well loved!” Michelle says, citing three sets of grandparents, a huge family and troops of friends. And since one set of twins’ birthday is near Christmas, there are gifts still waiting to be opened several months later.

Michelle says her vision for the basement space was a functional, orderly playroom with designated space for each activity and plenty of storage. “My goal for this room is that it’s easy—that everything has a home,” she says. “And there will be a place for the new gifts,” she adds with a grateful smile.

Organizer Melinda says one of her goals for the space was to create a system for storing the older twins’ toys and clothes until the younger ones grow into them and can enjoy them. “We can store and label them so Michelle can find them when they are needed. We don’t want her to miss that window of being able to use those things,” she says.

Before starting on the organizing project, Michelle and Melinda formed an action plan to determine specific goals for the room. They pinpointed the areas they would need to create for each activity, including art projects, dressing up, playing with dolls, reading, using the computer and watching videos.

Then, it was time to sort out the objects in the room using bins to separate the items into categories. “You have to start somewhere,” Melinda says. “Group like objects together in general terms—don’t think a lot at first.” In addition to the categorized bins, they set up piles for trash, things to donate and things that needed to be put elsewhere in the house.