Getting an Organized Kid’s Room: Involve Your Child

While organizing your kid’s room isn’t typically difficult to do, keeping it consistently organized can be a chore. The following are some great tips to help you to always have your kid’s room organized. There are also some great ideas for getting it organized initially.

Give Everything a Designated Place

This is the first step to getting, and keeping, your child’s room organized. Use labels to ensure that not only does everything have a place, but the places are clearly marked. You can do this with decorative flair and make cute labels, or you can make it more functional using a label maker; another option is simple, quick handwritten labels. Specifying that books go here, and thus, by default, not there, your child’s room is more likely to stay organized. If there are things in the room that do not have a specific home, remove them from the room, as items without a specific place for storage defeat the point of organizing the room.

Sort and Store

Once every basic item has a designated spot in the room, it is time to begin sorting and storing. For example, let’s say you bought a shelving system to store all of the toys in the room. While that’s a good place to start, getting the room truly organized means further separating your child’s toys into categories, each with a different bin. Designate a bin for dolls, one for stuffed animals and one for crayons and coloring books, for example. Now, your next step is organizing each aspect of the room separately. For example, start with the dresser and organize the clothes. Separate shirts and pants, socks and underwear, and so on until every piece of clothing has a place. The more you break things down into sub-categories the easier organization becomes. Once the items in the room are sorted, store them that way. This is where the next step comes into play.

Use Closet Organizers, Containers, Baskets and Bins

With kids’ rooms it is especially important that items aren’t simply placed on a shelf in an organized manner; they must actually have a container of some sort to go into. The container gets stored on the shelf. Mixing dolls with stuffed animals is disorganized and something might get lost. However if the basket of dolls ends out of place but the items are still contained together, so rather than a mess, you’ve simply got a basket out of place. Take advantage of the cute baskets with liners, canvas bins that come in a variety of colors and durable hard plastic containers with lids as all of these are great storage containers can be used to separate and store the many items in your child’s room. A loft bed system with bookshelf, desk or drawers goes a long way toward helping your child stay organized.

Involve Your Child in the Organization Process

If you truly want your child’s room to be theirs, ask for their input into how to organize it. If a child contributes ideas on how to organize their room, implement the doable ideas as they will take more pride and ownership when it comes to keeping it organized. Another advantage of having them help you with organizing their room is they will know where things go, as, where practical, you will have permitted them to decide where this basket or that one will go. This also makes it easier to hold them responsible for helping clean up when they’ve made a mess. If a stranger came into your home and cleaned out your dishwasher, chances are they would get a few things in the wrong place because they simply are not familiar with where things go. The same concept holds true for your child. When they help you sort and organize, and they will be better able to keep things neat and organized.