How do you keep track of your kids jigsaw puzzle pieces?

It drives me NUTS when puzzle pieces are missing - ask my hubby how insane I am about that! Every night I used to put the puzzles back together to make sure all the pieces were there . . . and stack them up and put them on the shelf. Well, back then there weren't as many pieces. But now there are a zillion pieces to deal with - hee hee. First, I make sure my daughter does her puzzles on the table. When she's done, I have her put the puzzles away so she can do the next one. Now that she's older at 5, it's good to have her clean up and put away her own stuff. We keep her puzzles in the box that it came in - so it's easy stacking on the shelf. We also know that all the pieces ARE there simply because she had just finished doing it. I have some puzzles that were given to us with no box - those I put in a ziploc bag. When we first got them, I had to make sure all the pieces were there, so I did them ALL one night as they were all mixed up. I know one mom who took a photo of it, printed it, and then affixed it onto the bag so her kid would know which puzzle it was. We have one 24 piece wooden jigsaw puzzle - and one of the pieces went missing when we moved here about 4 years ago. I went so bizerk looking for the piece everywhere - of course it wasn't to be found. I hate that this nice puzzle has a piece missing - and even though my daughter doesn't play with it anymore, I am sick that one piece is missing for when my son gets old enough to do it. Oh well.

I think that it is best to put colored stikers on the back on each jigsaw piece. Say red for one jigsaw. Other colorers that could be used would be yellow, blue, green, orange, pink, brown, black and purple. It is useful to have a tray to keep pieces that are found. Imagine you find a piece that has an orange skiker on it. Then you will know which jigsaw it belongs to.

I am very, very anal when it comes to the small parts of any of my children's toys. I will keep the parts to each puzzle or game in individually labeled ziploc bags and they are only allowed to get one out at a time. In the case of puzzles I will also list how many pieces are supposed to be in the bag so that when we are cleaning up I will be able to tell if there are any pieces missing. Oh, and I make sure that they don't get out more than one at a time because I keep the pieces put up in my room.

That is hard. I got some zipped bag that are 2 1/2 gallon in the US for my grandchildren. They can hold many of the hard backed frames and the loose pieces will fit right in the bag. It helped a lot to keep them clean and separated.