Tips to organize kids' rooms

Kids have different needs then adults so their rooms also should look different. How can you help your child organize and clean up life in his bedroom? Try these easy organization strategies to bring order to your child room.

First of all, take a child's eye view. Get down to your child's eye level to help him or her get organized. Look at your child's space, storage, furniture and possessions from his or her point of view.

Adults furniture and organizing systems don't translate well to children's needs. Sticky dresser drawers are hard for small hands to manage. Folding closet doors pinch fingers and jump their rails when pushed from the bottom. Closet hanging rods are out of reach, while adult hangers don't fit smaller clothing. Traditional toy boxes house a tangled jumble of mixed and scattered toy parts. So to organize a kid's room, solutions must fit the child needs.

So, for younger children you can remove closet doors entirely. Lower clothing rods and invest in child-sized hangers. Use floor-level open containers to hold toys and open plastic baskets to store socks and underwear.

Next advice - sort, store and simplify. Children's rooms are usually small, often shared, and generally lack built-in storage. Yet these rooms are host to out-of-season and outgrown clothing, surplus toys, and even household overflow from other rooms. Kids can't stay organized when the closet is crammed, the drawers are stuffed, and playthings cover each square inch of carpet, but there is solution - sort, store and simplify.

The premier rule for efficient children's storage? Make it easier to put something away than it is to get it out. For example, store picture books as a flip-file, standing upright in a plastic dishpan. The child flips through the books, makes his selection, and tosses the book in the front of the dishpan when he's done. Compare a traditional bookcase, where little fingers can pull down a whole shelf faster than they can replace one book.