Top 10 Things to Help Kids Be Organized

1. Create homes for all of your children’s clothes and toys, both in their room and throughout the house and garage. Make areas for containers for their toys and spaces for larger items to be stored so that everything has a home to be put back into.

2. Choose containers that are easy for your child to use. Allow your child to choose containers, baskets or toys that are easy for them to pick up and put away. Hooks, shelves or over the door pockets create spaces for things to be put away easily.

3. Label each area. You can together draw pictures and write the words to label each area. For example, DOLLS go in this basket, BLOCKS here, CRAYONS in this bin, and LEGOS in this container. Also label dresser drawers for socks, t-shirts, and pants.

4. Make clean up time FUN. Play music or sing a song and have their containers colorful and easy for them to use.

5. Schedule daily clean up time and expect your child to completely clean up every day, either before dinner or before bedtime.

6. Be a great role model. Parents can pick up their things while the kids are organizing their room so that the entire house is clean and tidied within minutes.

7. Build teamwork for mutual support. When the entire family cleans up at the same time, this creates more harmony in the household. Also, this alleviates resentments or arguments about who should do what rather than everyone picking up the entire house all at once. Each child can take responsibility for their things throughout the house.

8. Create a memory box for each child. They can keep all their artwork from the school year, knowing that at the end of the school year they may need to make decisions about what to keep and what to let go of. This also keeps the volume confined to what will fit in the box.

9. Schedule major cleanups every few months. It’s especially important to do this before or after birthdays and holidays when a large number of toys are coming in and at the end of the school year. Then you can teach them that there must be room for the new toys to be put away so that there isn’t so much clutter.

10. Celebrate that your child is learning excellent life skills! By teaching your children to be more organized and how to do this quickly and easily, they are learning life long skills that will help them be more successful in all that they do.

Shannon McGinnis, CPO®, Certified Professional Organizer
Author of The 10-Minute Tidy™: 108 Ways to Organize Your Home Quickly
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www.organized4success.com, www.10minutetidy.comnn