Over the weekend, Target announced it is going to move away from gender-based signs in departments where a gender distinction is not necessary – in this case, toys, home, and entertainment. Target says this is in response to internal discussion and customer feedback. I’m sure this viral tweet also had something to do with it:

This means that instead of going to the movie section and seeing DVDs organized into “Boy Movies” and “Girl Movies” they’ll simply be marked as “Kids’ Movies.” The toy section will now be organized by play function (building, dress up, STEM, etc) instead of, as the picture above showed, toys and “girls’ toys.” Similarly, bedding will be listed as “Children’s Bedding” instead of designating certain patterns and colors as appropriate for boys or girls.

I’ve seen a lot of hullabaloo about this online. Comments range from “This is the end of times!” to “This is a stupid thing to worry about, there are terrorists invading our military bases!” and “Now I’ll never be able to find any of the things I need to buy at Target!” While I’m sure that if there was a way for a department store to organize in a way that would better protect our military, they’d take it, I fail to see what’s so threatening about the new system.

I do want to help out the people who feel like they won’t know where to find anything, so I created this handy list:

how to find what you need at target

In a lot of ways, I actually think this will make things easier to find. There will no longer be two LEGO sections, two doll sections, two kids’ sheets sections. It remains to be seen how the items will be organized within each section, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for good old alphabetical order. What can I say, I’m a slave to those ABCs.

I also saw a lot of people swear they’d never shop at Target again, which I hope is still true come the holidays when I’m trying to score sweet deals. Less people to compete with as I wander through the reorganized toy aisle.