Organizing a kids room is something I loathe! The clutter eventually drives me crazy and organizing is our only option. When I came across an article from a professional organizer, a light went off. Simple steps. It seemed too easy to work.
I wish I had taken a photo of my daughter’s room before we started! It was a typical little girl room. Dirty clothes and shoes haphazardly thrown around. Dress up clothes in piles. Baby dolls and stuffed animals shoved under the bed. Books scattered everywhere. Jewelry box dumped. And the list goes on!
Standing in the middle of it made me cringe. This was it though. It was time. She needed a major clean out.
We implemented each step just as instructed. In our first hour, SHE decided to get rid of all of this…PLUS a trash can full of broken toys and trash.
I was in shock. This never happens! Usually she falls in love with every single thing in her room and refuses to part with her long lost treasures. Not this time! The tips worked so well, I couldn’t believe it.
Most Effective “How To” on Organizing a Kids Room:
- Get your kids involved! Explain to them that you are going to work together to organize their room. By doing this it will help make it easier for them to find their toys. It will also help them keep things cleaned up. For us, this ritual was nothing new. We do it at least a couple of times a year.
- Prepare them for weeding out! We talked about what we were going to do. We were going to decide whether to keep something, give it to a kid that didn’t have toys, or put it in the trash. She got a little nervous! Before we got started, we talked about there being kids out there that didn’t have any toys. How great would it be if we gave them some of our toys that we no longer wanted? She was all on board.
- Give your kids the power! Let them know they will make all of the decisions. What we keep. What we give to other kids. What goes in the trash. She was reassured and ready to go!
- Don’t be a Mom! This was the hardest for me, but I think I did really well. In the article I read, the author did not allow Mom’s in the room as she worked with a child to organize. Her reasoning was they were too sentimental. Let the kids work alone. At the end, after everything is finished, Mom gets to go through each donate/trash pile and make her own decisions.
- Start Slow! Focus on small groups so as not go get overwhelmed. We started with her play food. If it was bent, broken, or ripped…trash. Otherwise, she looked at each item. As she said “keep”, it went back in the bin. Then we moved to some of her little board books. She jumped at the opportunity to put them aside to save for her baby sister (that was one of our other categories). Stuffed animals and baby dolls went equally as easy!
- Organize as you go! When we finished with each group, we put it away. As we moved through groups in the room, it was being organized and cleaned up as we went. Then we moved on.
- Stop when kids disengage! Normally I would continue plowing through to finish the project and clean up the mess. Tonight, when she began playing instead of helping, we stopped. I left the mess. All I did at that point was move the pile of stuff we were getting rid of…out of her room!
- When done – It’s Mom’s Turn! You get to go through the give away/throw away piles. If there is anything there that you are really sentimental about, you can box it up and keep it for yourself. No need to keep it out cluttering your child’s room.
You can check out her full article:
Top 5 Lessons I Have Learned While Professionally Organizing Kids’ Bedrooms
Let me know if you try it! I would love to hear about your success, too.