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What you can do besides nag, to keep children's bedrooms clear:
Never go in the room. Never even look in the room. Deposit clean clothes and other necessities outside the door the same way food is deposited outside a jail cell. If you avoid even fleeting glimpses of these rooms, you may be able to enjoy at least the illusion that your home is organized and clutter-free.
If you can't (or won't), let's get to work on the second school of thought — giving them a chance to succeed:
- One genuine excuse kids have for not hanging up their clothes is that they can't reach the rods in the closets. Lower the rods to a height that allows them to be reached.
- Ditto for hooks to hang things on. Both of these items are usually easy to raise or lower. If the rod is difficult or inconvenient to move, leave it in place and install a new rod at a lower level. Both the brackets and the rod are quite inexpensive and are available at hardware stores. Raise them over the years as the kids grow. In the meantime, use those higher areas for storage.
- Get a nice big basket for their dirty clothes and an oversized wastebasket for trash. The bigger and the lower these baskets are, the better your odds are that they'll actually be used. You can also use plastic baskets for toys and games. Baskets can also be used for clean clothes if you don't have enough drawer space or if the kids can't reach the drawers. Inexpensive plastic tool or tackle boxes are great for things such as crayons, art supplies and other collections of smaller toys or supplies.
- Once you have installed the necessary boxes and baskets and have lowered the rods and hangers in the closet, label all these items according to their purpose. Use words or pictures, depending upon the age of the child. Also label shelves, drawers and cupboards.
- If you're short on space in the kids' rooms, you might consider an investment in a captain's bed (a platform bed with built-in drawers under the mattress.) Or add-on drawers can be installed under conventional mattress frames.
Is it worth the struggle? This sounds like a lot of work for you. Is it really worth the effort? Even after you do the organizing, the really hard part will be to teach the kids actually to use all these organizational tools. Our two cents' worth is yes, it's worth it. Children want to learn. Doing everything for them is far from beneficial. The competence you hope they'll have later in life as adults starts with learning and acquiring skills sooner or later. Sooner seems better.
Excerpted from Jeff Campbell's Clutter Control: Putting Your Home on a Diet.
Safe Passage to the Kid Zone: Created on November 4th, 2003. Last Modified on January 21st, 2014
