Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Organizing Kids' Rooms

from Cindy - A Reader's Tip from The Dollar Stretcher - www.stretcher.com - Used by permission

Additional Dollar Stretcher Resource: More on organizing kids rooms

I have five kids crammed into two small bedrooms, so I understand crowded rooms! Here are some things that have worked for us.
 
We took our kids' nice clothes (the ones that need to be hung up) out of their rooms and made some space in another closet. Their closets are now filled top to bottom with shelves, which hold toys in handy bins. My organizationally-impaired children just toss stuff into whatever bin, while my tidy kids have things labeled. Either way, it gets stuff off the floor.
 
My kids must pick up their rooms every day!  Everything must be off the floor and their clothes must be put away with drawers shut before they watch TV or whatever. This keeps the mess from accumulating for an entire week and making it an all day project to straighten up. On the days when we really clean the room, we fish out all the stuff that's migrated under their beds, etc.

Finally, we've let our kids have a big part in determining what we do with their rooms, and we've allowed them to find a system that works for them. We realized early on that one of our daughters was never going to become an everything-in-its-place kind of kid. It's just not her personality. Rather than fighting it, we've allowed her to do what she likes as long as a minimum standard is met.

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