One of the most common requests I get is, “help me organize kids’ rooms!!”
Kids naturally accumulate a lot of things. This starts from birth when you have all.of.the.things to care for a newborn. A weekend away practically requires a Uhaul.
In addition, as they get bigger, they collect even more. The toys, books, art creations.
Unfortunately this is where the stress lives: in the stuff.
But there are some simple ways to organize their rooms to cut the crazy.
Turn down the volume
First, the biggest issue is they have too much stuff.. Organizing can’t be successful if you don’t have control of the amount of stuff you have.
And if you’ve ever heard “I’m bored,” then it’s likely your kid has too many toys. They are overwhelmed and overstimulated so they don’t have the focus to pick a toy to play with.
Cut their volume down to something manageable. Believe it or not, kids like it simple too.
While they may generally try to keep most of their toys, they truly thrive better with less. More creativity and imaginary play comes from less stuff.
In other words, kids are often overwhelmed with too many options and that’s why they never play with the toys they have.
After you edit, it will relieve the overstimulation and let them be kids, with less.
However, the struggle here is usually about getting rid of hard-earned money in those toys. Here’s the hard truth. You won’t get that money back. But you will continue to spend your “energy currency” on the headache the extra toys bring.
And after you make the purge and concerted effort to reduce the clutter, keep that effort in mind the next time you’re at the checkout.
Homes within a home:
Now that you have your toy mountain under control, it’s time to create systems. The systems actually organize kids’ rooms for easy maintenance.
This will require you to create homes within the home.
For instance, one big toy box of their stuff often gets dumped out to a big mess to find that one toy at the bottom of the box.
Similarly, pieces get put away in different parts of their room, so when they want to play with it, but can’t because they can’t find all of the pieces.
Their toys need defined homes so it’s easy to put things away AND easy to find when they want to use it.
This looks like having separate bins for specific toys. One for the balls, one for the cars, one for the stuffed animals. One of my favorite bins for kids spaces are these from the Container Store. They come in various sizes to help define a home for all varieties of toys.
Routines for success
Next, after you have your toys reduced to the essentials and defined in their homes, all you have left to do is maintain it!
Easy peasy, right?!
Do these first two steps and it will make it simpler for your kiddos to do their part. But it’s not an overnight habit.
It will take some time, effort and discipline. New habits will be easier once the space is simpler to maintain.
How to get your kids to help:
- Get them in a routine.
- Set expectations.
- Reinforce steps 1 and 2.
Kids like structure. And guess what?! Grownups are just big kids!
Everyone thrives on structure!! Schedules, order, processes…makes things easier.
Routines simplify; therefore, when things are simple, managing the time+task reduces the stress.
And that’s what we all want, right?
Simplicity comes down to two things: Identify the essential + eliminate the rest.
Check out my guide for creating a simplified start to your day, that will not only be more productive, but also maintain an easy lifestyle at home.
Easy peasy. Win-win!
