Curious Parents Parenting Resources

kids’ spaces

Your Room’s Clean—Is Theirs? How to Get Your Child’s Room Clean in 4 Steps
By Darla DeMorrow

Millions of parents every day are bonded in the struggle over their child’s room. If your kids can’t seem to keep their room clean, despite repeated threats, cajoling, or eye rolling, take the steps to help them. While you may or may not be ready to hire a professional organizer for your child, you can use some of the organizing principles that professional organizers employ to help your beloved, but messy kids improve…if they want to.

Find the pain

Regardless of the age of your child, find out if they are bothered by their room. Both of the expressions, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,” and “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” come into play here. If your child’s room doesn’t bother him or her in the least, you may be fighting an uphill battle. However, you may be surprised to find out that the things that do bother her are very different from the things that bother you. For instance, while you are dismayed that clothes are always on the floor instead of in the closet, it turns out that she’s unhappy that there’s not more room in the closet for dolls and their clothes! He may be fine treading on an inch thick carpet of “stuff,” but he’s dismayed that he can’t ever find his favorite red sweater. You have to agree there’s a problem, though, since your child might be like the way the room looks but hates your constant disapproval.

Look for “technical problems”

Technical problems have less to do with personal habits and more to do with the space layout. A large room can still be a mess simply because there aren’t enough shelves to put things on. A closet, no matter the size, can be a big technical problem if all it contains are the standard shelf-and-rod combination from the builder. A younger child may never put away toys because the container (dresser, bin, or box) is too hard to use. Dressers can be too big and bulky. Closet doors can be hard to operate and the sliding ones seem to always fall off the track. Toy boxes always have the best stuff way in the bottom—and they throw everything on top onto the floor to get to the good stuff. So what you want to do is look for ways to make storage user-friendly with age-appropriate containers, organizers, labels and colors.

Love the labels

Don’t overlook the obvious. Just as you have each file folder at work labeled so you know where papers go, kids need visual clues to help them know where things belong. You may have purchased that great new set of toy baskets, but what goes in them? Just because you can dump all the toys in them in five minutes or less doesn’t make it easier for a small child to retrieve or return items. Create labels and keys for storage using both words and pictures. If something is actually called “the sock drawer,” there is a better than average chance that socks will actually end up there.

Be prepared for change

Kids grow up, receive new toys, and pass items on to other family members. A one-time investment in a single set of containers may not be sufficient, so buy the most flexible system possible. For instance, closet systems with a combination of rods and shelves that can be re-positioned easily inside the closet is a better bet than wire shelves that have to be taken out and then reinstalled into the drywall in order to move them. Investments in flexible systems allow your child to take advantage of the fact that they need more space for some things and less space for others as they mature. Dolls give way to art supplies. Legos get swapped for guitar gear. Watch for transitions and fit the storage solution to the stuff, not the other way around.

Organization is a life skill, just like money management or knowing how to swim. Your kids will be dealing with STUFF for the rest of their life. Sure, kids can skip that lesson, but you’ll feel better knowing you prepared them with a good foundation. As the words of a kids’ song go, “Do you own your stuff, or does the stuff you own you?”

Darla DeMorrow is a professional organizer and member of the Society of Decorating Professionals and the National Association of Professional Organizers.