How do you organize your home so that kids' stuff doesn't take over?
It was hard enough to organize your home before the kids arrived. Now with kids—and their friends—leaving toys around the house, the idea of organizing your home is daunting to say the least. Believe it or not, it is possible to declutter and get organized.
With such a busy household, it is hard to stay on top of the clutter. But if your system is set up right, it's much easier to maintain. If every object has a convenient, well-labeled home, it literally only takes a second to put things back where they belong. If you are committed to organizing your home, follow these tips:
- Find a home for everything: A growing family means new acquisitions enter your home that may not have a place yet. If that's why you have "hot spots" of clutter the key is to create a home—go through the piles, identify the categories, and create a place for everything.
- Make storage convenient: OK, you've created a home for things, but it's too hard to get to (e.g., you've got to pull out a step stool to reach a shelf, to grab one of six bins, to open the lid ... well, you get the idea). Make it easy for you to declutter and get organized with convenient storage. In other words, store things where they are used, making sure you don't have to walk far or climb over anything to put things away around your home.
- Share the system with your family: Teach your family your system. Add labels to cabinets and bins so they know where to put things away. And create a rule that no matter how messy a room gets, everything gets put back in its home before each person leaves the room. Organizing your home is the whole family's job!
- If you follow these simple rules, organizing your home won't seem so impossible!