A grand spectacle of dirty clothes in heaps with toys strewn all over the carpet. Sounds familiar? Here’s how you can fight against the war of clutter in your children’s room.

#1 The Four ‘S’ – Sort, Simplify, Store and Sustain

• Sort your children’s items and group them into various categories
• Simplify the things needed by purging outgrown items and setting them aside for recycle bins or for donation
• Store the things which are still in use in various storage compartments or boxes
• Sustain the housekeeping routine by getting your children involved in the tidying up process. By proactively involving them, they will understand and appreciate your tidying up system and help you maintain their rooms.

#2 Organize from Bottom to Top

Bear in mind that during the housekeeping process, your children’s most used belongings should be placed in the lower shelves or drawers. Seasonal items should be stored at the higher levels.

#3 Go for Multi-functional Furniture

Using multi-functional furniture offers a fantastic way to reclaim storage space while avoiding clutter. A storage bench can double up as a toy chest and using a storage bed means that all the toys, clothes and knick-knacks can be hidden away from sight.

#4 Label everything

Children are usually more visually inclined. Use photo labels or pictures of toys, socks and books for your storage compartments to remind them of where these items should belong to. Such practice means faster identification of the contents too. You can make this a fun process by playing “match the label” games with your children.

#5 Color Code

If you have children sharing a room or closet, you should consider delineating the space and storage set aside for each child with color codes. For instance, you can use pastel pink for girls and blue for boys. Such an approach should help keep peace and designate ownership of each area and identification of each kid’s domain.

#6 Inventorise

Make it a habit to create an inventory in your children’s room to keep track of your children’s personal items. Knowing everything makes it easier to declutter in the future and also saves you the hassle of searching through the entire room for your children’s items.

Additional Tips

• Keep your toys at a kid-friendly level. This is easier for children to put their toys away on their own. Use the floor space for shoes, socks or laundry hampers and so on.
• Clear stack-able plastic boxes or totes are recommended for storage needs as you can see the contents at a glance.
• Invest in double hanging clothes rods. These can fully maximize the closet space as children’s clothes are typically smaller in size and do not take up much space. Child-sized hangers will also not clutter up the limited space.
• Invest in modular, flexible closet solutions so that the closet storage grows with them. The configurable components can be easily rearranged to accommodate your children’s bodies as they grow taller. Drawers can be reassigned and hanging baskets can also be added to accommodate different types of accessories.

This article is contributed by Renonation.

This article was first published in The New Age Parents e-magazine.

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