How To Organize Kids Room
Kids are kids, and you’ll probably always want to shut their bedroom doors when you have company. A certain amount of mess is expected.
You don’t want to make your children into little neurotic neat freaks, but there are certain tips to organizing kid rooms that will definitely help at least keep things looking halfway tidy.
Organizing Kids Rooms to Keep Your Sanity
Toy Chests Are A Short Term Fix
First of all, get rid of the toy chest. Who on earth came up with this invention? It’s the equivalent of having your kid shove everything under his bed or in his closet. Toy chests are short term fixes. When someone is about to come over or it is time to clean his room, your child can throw everything into the toy chest. The toy chest, however, guarantees that the room will be trashed again very, very shortly.
The grass is always greener on the other side, especially for children. There is always a better toy than the one he has in his hands at that moment. The better toy, without fail, is at the very bottom of the toy chest. This means, of course, that he has to dump out every single toy in the toy chest to get to the toy he wants. Voila. His room is a mess.
Install Shelves For Toys
A much better solution is to have shelves, preferably with doors or a curtain to hide the mess. The secret to shelving is that he can see everything right in front of him. He can visually select a toy, and at the most you will have three or four toys on the ground. It is important to mention that toy shelves should be secured to the walls.
A standing shelf unit can easily be tipped. Make sure that wall shelves are secure enough that they don’t fall, even if your child climbs on them. To help with fairly young children putting toys back into their place, a nice “Teddy lives there and wants to sleep in his special place on the shelf” story will usually help.
Use Hanging Shelves As Closet Organizers
One of the greatest kid room closet organizers is the hanging shelves with a cubby hole for each day of the week where you can put that day’s outfit. I’ve actually seen this nifty tool in practice.
The key is to get the child involved on a Sunday evening. Make it a ritual that you both choose and place his clothing for each day of the week. It truly makes getting ready in the morning so much faster and easier.
You can also use shelving to keep activity outfits like soccer uniforms (with shoes), karate clothing, etc. If you assign it a place and put it there after every wash, you can skip all of the crazy “MOM where are my shoes?” running around at the last minute before practices and games.
Give Old Toys To Charity
When your child’s room gets cluttered and he’s reluctant to part with any of his toys or possessions, I usually advise either a clutter talk or a charity talk. The clutter talk is where you prepare your child not to end up being a packrat.
Explain that he needs room to play, sleep, and walk, and that if he keeps every toy he ever gets, he won’t have any room. Lead by example and ask him to give up one toy or other possession for every new toy. You should do the same to keep the house from getting cluttered and to set an example for him.
The charity talk is simply explaining that there are a lot of little girls and boys who don’t have any toys at all and doesn’t he have a few that he can share with them? You shouldn’t force your child to give his toys away (think Mommy Dearest), but you can certainly reason with him and ask him to consider donating some toys.
Be sure to reward him by telling him how nice it was and how much the little children will appreciate what he did.
While you won’t always have a magazine perfect kid room, applying these tips will at least make your kid room a bit more efficient and neat. His bed might not always be made, but at least mornings will go a bit more smoothly and you won’t kill yourself by tripping over toys dumped out of a toy chest.
