6 Ways to Organize Your Kid’s Closets

10 Oct 2017

6 Ways to Organize Your Kid’s Closets

Kid’s closets can be a black hole of dirty clothes, toys and whatever gets thrown in there during clean up time. You can teach your kids to be organized and clean up after themselves, but they need a good organizational system in place first.

1. Make it user-friendly. Use open, kid-friendly containers on low shelving so your child can take out and put things back with minimal or no assistance. Lower the closet rods to kid- height. They can’t hang anything, if they can’t reach the hangers! Better yet, pull out the rods and put a set of drawers in the closet instead. You’ll get more storage out of the space and kids are more likely to put things away in a drawer than on a hanger.

2. Remove lids. The fewer steps in the process, the more likely it is to work. Ever notice a child’s hamper with a lid? Often there’s nothing inside, but clothes are piled on top and around. Keep it open and keep it simple.

3. Label the fronts of all bins and drawers with pictures (for little kids) or words (for bigger kids). Make it obvious as to where things go. Creating the labels can even be a fun art or photography project that your kids can help with.

4. Get your kids involved in the process – everything from setting up the zones, choosing and labeling containers, to the daily retrieval and clean up of their clothes. It’s never too early to teach kids how to take care of their possessions.

5. Routinely go through your children’s clothing and purge items that are not being used or do not fit. If they’re in good condition, another family can use them, and your child will have more space to work with.   

6. Provide positive feedback. Reinforce your family’s organizational skills by rewarding kids for using the systems you’ve put in  place. This could be as simple as a high five for putting toys away or a sticker system with small rewards built in for  achieving goals for the week.