How to Organize Your Children’s Belongings
You have small humans in your life. Or tweens or teens…and your home shows it. A lot. Like take over from an alien nation, you may feel as though you’ve lost recognition of the place you call home because your dwelling is covered in “stuff” belonging to people less than adult. Sometimes we can chalk the mess up to children being unaware; they don’t know where to put things away…but usually the disorganization can be blamed on two things: either proper storage solutions are not in place or there are simply far too many items for the space. (Food for thought: the LA Times reported that while “US children make up 3.7% of the children on the planet, they have 47% of all toys and children’s books.” https://www.latimes.com/health/la-xpm-2014-mar-21-la-he-keeping-stuff-20140322-story.html) Regardless of why you have found yourself facing overflow, I’m here to help. Let’s talk remedy:
Step one: identify the space where the toys ideally should be – usually bedrooms, playrooms, dedicated nooks in living rooms etc. (Notice here, I did not say “whole house.”)
Step two: (spoiler alert: this is going to disappoint you because it is so basic…) sit in the space and look at your amount of belongings compared to the amount of available storage options; they must be complimentary. If you have an explosion of toys or kids gear without the proper place to store them away, you cannot blame the small humans for not putting things away. Let me say this again because it is so important: you must have the proper space for children’s belongings otherwise they will trample out of rooms, overflowing in toy-mageddon. This you have no time or patience for.
Step three: decide if you can implement storage options to properly contain/display belongings or if you need to cull down the belongings.
If you know you need to declutter before you can allocate items into storage spaces, try involving your children in the process if they are three or older. Ask them outright what they love and need vs what they don’t use anymore and could part with…their answers may surprise you. If however, you live with someone who likes to keep everything down to the gum wrapper in his/her pocket, treat the review process with them as informational; not executive order. Remember, you are the Mom/Dad Boss. Proceed post-review with them on your own to fully address the situation.
If you opt for implementing storage, I recommend a large piece of furniture to contain smaller organizational buckets/bins, etc. Most ideal are cabinets of a sort, with doors that conceal the belongings in bins/buckets, but shelving units with items allocated into bins/buckets, etc. are also perfectly acceptable. If you have a lot of smaller organizational items without a proper place to put them, it is going to look chaotic. (Think of a room full of misc. containers scattered about on the floor…)
Note: If you need to limit some of the madness but aren’t ready to part with items, here’s a great trick that works particularly well with younger children: divide items into like groups; puzzles with puzzles, stuffed animals with stuffed animals, arts and crafts gear all together etc. Then, pick out just a few items from each group and pack the rest away to rotate out weekly or biweekly. It’s a win-win: your children will feel like they are getting new things to play with and you will feel like you’ve created more organization in your home. If you do not have an adequate storage space to stow away the miscellaneous bins in while not in use, (such as a basement, attic, or even garage) you my friend, need to do some decluttering and really examine what your child needs in their life. The overflow must go!
Additionally: children are amazing empathetic. If it can be explained to them in a non-threatening way that there are other children who would massively benefit from receiving a few of their toys, they will often light up at the idea of being helpful to someone else in need.
Step four: once you have decluttered to remove overflow and implemented storage, you should be able to look around and feel like the chaos has been tamped down. When the chaos rises again, which it inevitably will because your home is not static, take stock of your belongings and identify what has tipped the equation out of balance. Did your children receive a new set of electronic gaming equipment, but never removed the old set? Have new art supplies arrived and been mashed into a bin with old ones that don’t contain both properly? Did you purchase new sports gear and load it into the garage without consideration for the pieces already present? I recommend reviewing and adjusting children’s belongings every other month or at least seasonally, depending on how many belongings your household tends to acquire.
RECAP:
* Identify the space that needs to be addressed
* Identify the storage options in the space vs the belongings
* Remove overflow and rotate, donate or sell
* Create storage solutions to accommodate the belongings
* Review as needed