How To Organize Kids Rooms - Organised Pretty Home

All You Need To Know About Kids Room Organization

Does your child’s room feel messy and overwhelming? It is just chaos! Even when it gets tidy up it just ends a big mess again. Like stuff EVERYWHERE! I am nodding here!

Thank goodness there is an answer called kids room organization! Thankfully, It doesn’t include barking like a Sergeant at your kids every day or worse, getting in there and cleaning up their room yourself all the time.

Read on to find out all you need to know to get your kids room organized whether they are 4 years old or 13 years old. Whether you have 3 kids in one room, a shared room or your child has their own room. It will even help to organize your child’s room when they struggle with organization.

1. Start With Less Stuff

First, two things to consider about your child’s room.

Is there are a lack of suitable storage and organization in their bedroom?
Is there simply too much stuff?

When there is less stuff, there are less things to make a mess with and so the room stays tidier. Tidying up is also less overwhelming and easier to kids to do when they have less stuff.

Before the organizing happens, go through and declutter what’s in the room.

Check out these decluttering resources:

Sometimes the mess on the floor isn’t a clutter issue. It’s the result of a lack of simple organization!

2. Put Like Items Together

The best way to organize kids rooms is by grouping and then storing like items together. One of the big advantages of doing that is that it is much easier to do an accurate stock take of the bedroom contents.

You both know whether your child really needs new pencils or not or whether they have enough dolls to play with because all those items are stored together.

Where do I put these colouring in pages? Oh yeah, with the textas.

Where do I put these empty glass jars that I got from the neighbour? Oh yeah, with the other things that I use for playing games like schools.

Where do I put these beading set? Oh yeah, with other craft activities or hobbies.

This also works really well for organizing kids’ clothing and is one reason I now store the kids’ off season clothing with the current season.

And for the clever kids, items can be “like” simply because they are not similar to anything else. Yes, a miscellaneous drawer!

3. Everything Has A Place

The key to organise kids room is to give every item a home. Clearly knowing where their stuff belongs, makes tidying up a lot easier for your child.

Some kids may be able to decide where they want to home their things independently. Other kids may need some prompting with questions and even suggestions to decided where things will fit best.

Some kids may need a parent to decide where stuff will live, and even picture or word labels to make things easy to remember.

Organizing a bedroom for a 4 year old? Check out how to organize toys for ideas that work for young kids.

Younger kids and toddlers need the toys and books they frequently use, to be at level they can reach. Baskets in a storage cube or low shelving work well!

Questions to help kids decide where things will go:

Where could you put these items (books, cars, dolls etc.) so that they can all fit?
Will these items affect how easy the drawer or cupboard will be to open and close?
Can you reach these items if you put them up high?
Do you have a suitable size container to house similar items together?
Is this something you use often or only occasionally?

Sometimes, discovering an item’s home can take a bit of trial and error.

Since our last sort through, Miss K had, had a birthday! So there were a few extra items in her room which didn’t have a place designated for them yet. These were soon found a home!

Reminder to self (and other parents): Talk to my kids about where they want to store their Christmas or birthday gifts! Otherwise they may end up piled on the floor, desk , bed etc.

4. Store Items So Everything Can Be Viewed At First Glance

What does that mean? It means that everything must be easy to view or see whether it is in a drawer, cupboard, shelf, closet etc.

To my daughter, “You have to be able to see what’s in all your drawers. No piles allowed! There must be nothing kept on the floor.”

Miss K then had a mild panic attack when she realised that I was serious about her not keeping her stuff on the floor, underneath the bed (which was full) or on top of her dressing table. AND it couldn’t be crammed into spaces because it had to be easy to view.

It’s important for our kids to learn now when they are only managing a small area (their room) that “storage space has limits”. That space is not expandable, if you just try to push things into a drawer and squeeze it shut.

Personally I have found this one of the most helpful rules when organising any space in my home. When I can see everything easily, like in my pantry, I am less likely to forget what I have there and so stuff gets used.

Visually I reckon it is prettier as well!

5. Display It

Do you know what the most frequent question I asked as we organized my kid’s room?

What is this for?
Do you use it for that?
Why are you keeping it?

Ok, that’s more than one question!

In essence though, finding out the purpose of the item will determine what kind of storage is best! Specifically, will be this item have a home where it can be used or displayed. Sometimes both!

For example, we worked out that the main reason Miss K was keeping the stickers below, was not to use them as stickers but she thought they were really cute. Kittens – I think they are cute too!

So we decided to clip them onto her pin up board so they could be enjoyed rather than packed away in a drawer. Who says a page of stickers can’t be used as decor?

When your child collects stuff… RUN FOR THE HILLS!! …. Just kidding!

It doesn’t really matter, whether the collection is a pile of rocks from the sand pit at school or snails. Well um, the snail collection you might want to discourage, especially if they are alive and escape the bedroom like we had happen once. But that all said, collections work best when they can be displayed.

The type of area (eg. shelves, frames) used for display provides a natural limit to the size of the collection. For example, only a few shelves leads to choosing what are the best or most interesting items in their collection. An important skill to learn!

Here are some ideas to display specific items:

6. Closed Storage

It is perfectly ok to store items out of sight in a cupboard or closet, as long as they are easy to access and put away.

In Miss K’s room, we ended up creating a to-do drawer. It is what it sounds like! It stores craft activities and other items that are meant to be used rather than kept untouched for a long period of time.

Board games, cards, marbles, craft kits, puzzles etc are all items that are intended to be enjoyed and played with rather than put on display.

Closed storage is also good for clothing, shoes, accessories, school work, bits and pieces.

7. Progress Is Better Than Perfection!

Ok, you have put in a big effort to get the bedroom organized. Well done!

Remember, an organized space may never feel like it is completely finished or perfect. But ditch the expectation of perfection and enjoy the results, that the room will be easier for the kids to tidy up and keep clean.

You may find that getting a kids room organized is something you need to revisit every so often. Especially as they mature and their interests and activities change.

Enjoy the benefits of have an organized kids room. Your kids can put away their stuff where it belongs, and well you can choose to ignore or close the door on the other days!

Check Out More Awesome Kids Room Organization Ideas