Hi.
I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today we’re
going to talk about organizing for kids.
I’m standing here in a closet that I just did a makeover on for some elementary age
school children, and when you’re working with kids, you have to think first about a
combination of safety and age appropriateness and even their height, because what you’re
trying to do is bring all of their most frequently used items down to a level that is appropriate
for them and you don’t want them having to climb up on something that might be unsafe,
or you also don’t want them to have to depend on you too much to do their morning and evening
routines.
So fostering independence means keeping things down within reach, and you also want to work
with their habits.
So kids like things to be put away as easily as possible, if they even do it at all, so
you want to make it as easy as possible for them.
A great example is right here.
Why don’t you take your existing towel rack, pull that out, replace it with two hooks?
Not only do you get two towels hung in the space of one, but you also have worked with
a kid’s habit, which is they’re gonna sit it right upon the hook, they’re not
going to fold it neatly and hang it over a rack.
So you want to think about this in all of the systems that you’re creating for kids.
So I wanted to show you the cubbies here that we have in this system.
I’ve used ClosetMaid’s Shelf-Track Elite here, which is fantastic for kids because
not only can you use these great laminate pieces and intersperse them with the wire
shelving – and so that means drawers and cubbies – but you also can adjust all of
it.
So think about it, when the kids get older, their needs change, they [POP] get taller,
they’re going to have different sizes of clothes that are longer, so you can adjust
all of these pieces as all of that changes.
So even these cubbies, you can adjust them differently.
So with these small cubbies, they’re appropriate for small children’s shoes, but when their
shoes get a little bigger, you may want the cubbies to be larger, and you just take those
pieces out like you see here.
Of course you can’t talk about kids without talking about toys.
They’re all over your house, they get so frustrating.
So what you don’t want to do is store toys the way many of us stored them growing up,
and that is using a huge gaping toy box.
It seems like a good idea because you can throw them all in one place, but it creates
behaviors that you don’t want.
One of them is rooting.
So the kids are rooting through the stuff because they can’t find anything, they don’t
have visibility to their stuff, and then when they get frustrated rooting through and they
[POP] still can’t find something, it creates another behavior which is dumping of the big
toy box.
So that’s really a mess and you don’t want that.
They’re just trying to get visibility to what they have.
So what you want to do instead is have categories with smaller containers and making it really
easy to find the exact set of Legos or the exact set of Transformers, or whatever you’re
playing with.
So these fabric drawers are a great way to do this.
[POP] This is a really good example of another concept that I wanted to show you actually,
and this is a little marble race toy that’s got lots of little pieces to it.
You don’t want to necessarily store the toys that you buy in the container that you
purchased them in.
So typically that’s a flimsy box, and it’s great for getting the toy from the factory
to the store, but not necessarily for storing it long-term with the wear and tear that kids
put on their toys.
So that’s why something like this fabric drawer is great, it holds all the little pieces,
kids can throw that in really simply.
And then, of course, you want to label that.
So that helps with the visibility so they can find what they want.
This a really cute little snap-on label that we found at Target.
If you can’t find these, you can also use a hanging string tag.
You can get these at any office supply.
Or some other creative labeling method.
But you definitely want to have some labels on these so the kids can find their stuff.
Now, the kids in this family where we did the makeover are old enough to read really
well.
So these word labels were very appropriate for them.
But if you have younger kids and they’re just learning to read, combining a word label
with a picture is a better strategy.
So you can just print out labels that are pictures of the actual toy from Google Images,
just go find a picture of the toy, and then get that laminated and then you can punch
a hole in it and hang it here, or whatever works for the container that you’re using.
But that will help their reading skills, and it helps their visibility to their toys.
As I mentioned before, adjustability is a big deal when you’re creating organizing
systems for kids.
So if the activity table that you saw previously is too youthful for your older kids, you can
move the cube storage idea into a nice piece of furniture like this.
This is the six-cube storage unit from Target that is in weathered oak, which is a really
nice furniture style that will last all the way until they leave for college.
And what’s great about this – actually I’ve never seen this in cube storage before
– is that these shelves are adjustable.
So you can put books in here, and different toys, and, of course, interchange those with
the fabric cubes.
You can also change the cubes themselves.
These fabric drawers are available in all kinds of different colors and textures.
If this color becomes too [POP] youthful for your older teen, you can certainly change
that out for a more muted color that goes with their more grown-up room.
So you can learn more about these cube storage units at ClosetMaid.com, and if you like what
you see, you can see more tips here on our YouTube channel.
Share your ideas in the comments, and certainly subscribe to us.
You can find us at http://www.clutterdiet.tv.
See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.