Seven Steps to Help Your Kids Organize Their Rooms

As your children enter their tween and teen years, it’s natural to give them more privacy and control over their rooms.  But what do you do if they are living in chaos?  Many children are disorganized and messy, which makes it hard for them to function.  By following these steps you can help them get organized and stay that way!

• Help them see the importance of being organized. Many kids and teens are perfectly content living in a state of disorder. The first step to helping them become more organized is to help them see the benefits. Remind them of times that they lost a precious item in the piles of junk in their room. Talk about how much easier it will be for them to get their chores and homework done if their space is organized and tidy. Show them photos of organized kids or teens rooms in magazines or online so that they can get inspired by what an orderly room can look like. Resist the urge to sweep into your children’s rooms while they are at a sleepover and reorganize for them. They need to be involved in order to take ownership of the process.
• Make a plan. Once your child is on board, the very first step to organizing is to make a plan. Sit down with your child and ask what he would like his room to look like. Ask about what he likes to do in his room, what his most important things are and how he’d like to display them. Find out which things he absolutely must have in his room and which things can go into storage and also what he wants his room to look like when you are finished.  Once you have a plan, you can more clearly envision the end result, which will be motivating to you and your child.
• Purge!  An essential step in the process is to get rid of everything that your child doesn’t need in the room. Start with the obvious: anything broken, outdated, no longer useful or obviously trash needs to go. Then move on to the piles of things that may still be useful but perhaps are not needed. One helpful rule of thumb is to ask these questions: Have you used it in the last month? Do you plan on using it in the next month? Do you truly enjoy this item? Is it something that you would like to save forever? If the answer to more than one of these questions is no, then you should consider trashing or donating the item.  
• Get the right tools. Now comes the fun part…go shopping!  (A perfect excuse to visit Kansas City’s new Ikea store!)  If at all possible, take your child with you. One key to being able to stay organized is making sure that you have the right tools. Every room is different, but look for things that fit in your child’s room, fit his style and serve a specific purpose. Some items that might be useful are closet organizers, bins and boxes, under bed storage, hanging organizers, shelves and desk organizers. Think outside of the box! Clothes don’t have to go in a dresser where they might end up shoved in and overflowing. Maybe a locker with shelves would work better and be easier to access. Use small bins and boxes inside of drawers or on shelves to keep them orderly.
• A place for everything and everything in its place. Armed with your organizational tools, it’s time to get to work. First, work with your child to develop groupings of items that make sense to hm. Create zones in his room, such as an art area, homework area, dressing space and a reading nook so that it’s easier for him to remember where things go. Next, find a place for everything. Make sure that each and every toy, piece of clothing, art supply, keepsake, book and game has a home. If you can’t find a home for an item, then perhaps you need to purge it or find another area of your house in which to keep it.  Once everything is in its place, you and your child should be able to look at the room and see an organized, logical space that will help him function better at work and at play.
• Develop a routine. Organization is not done after the weekend you spend putting everything in its place. Every day you need to work to keep things orderly and tidy. Develop a routine with your child that involves his making time to ensure that everything is put away where it belongs. This doesn’t mean that you have to demand a spotless room 100 percent of the time. Do what works for your family, but you may want to set an expectation that your child’s room be in order either each evening or by the end of each weekend. Soon he will learn that it’s a lot easier to put things away as he goes rather than waiting to clean up a bigger mess every weekend.
• It’s a process. Organization is an ongoing effort, and there will be setbacks. Don’t stress if you walk into your child’s room and it once again has piles of everything everywhere. The good news is that once you put the foundations of organization in place reorganization is much easier. Keep working with your child and encourage him to do his best each week and soon you will see that organization has become second nature.

Sara Keenan lives in Brookside with her husband and two children whose rooms any given week vary from spotless to “did a tornado hit your room?”