If you have kids, staying organized at home probably feels somewhere between an absolute necessity and utterly impossible. Ok, let’s not kid ourselves, most days we’re probably leaning toward the utterly impossible side of that equation. But don’t give up just yet, every bit of organizing effort you put into your family’s home will go a long way toward maintaining your sanity, even if perfectly organized is an impossibility. So step back, take a deep breath and let’s start with some overall strategies for creating a kid-friendly, organized home.
- Take a child’s eye view. Especially when it comes to living with little ones, it helps to get down to their level and take a look at your space. Look for hidden dangers, such as tippy furniture, outlets, and breakable items. Disorganized and dangerous is a lot worse than just disorganized. Create zones, just a like a kindergarten classroom so toys and activities are easy to find, use and put away. And last but not least, choose furniture and storage solutions that fit and aren’t fussy.
- Get everyone involved. Getting the whole family involved in the organizing process can help ensure that everyone will be on board with maintaining the new set up. Kids can help make decisions, choose containers, make labels and more.
- Simplify. Remove as much excess stuff as possible. Kids are always getting new stuff – make sure to retire or rotate older items on a regular basis to avoid over-crowding, which leads to frustration and broken things.
- Make clean up easy. Start a clean up routine at the end of the day. Make it fun – make a game out of tossing soft items back in a bin or have a clean up race, seeing who can complete a task faster. Use clear or labeled open (or easy to open) containers to store different categories of toys. If kids know where stuff goes and it’s easy to put it there, they’ll be more likely to help put it all away at the end of the day.
- Organize bottom to top. Prime real estate for kids is down low. Keep the most-used items low and store less-frequently used items up on higher shelves. Also keep items that you want to be in charge of out of reach and maybe even out of sight.
- Label, label, label. Labeling helps kids and everyone else in the house know where to find things and where to put them away. If your kids are too young to read, include a picture on the label, so they can help too.
Organizing a home with kids is not about perfection, but about implementing strategies that make things easier!
