Corral the Mess in Your Child's Room
by Lily Morgan

Description: Tips for sorting and organizing toys in your kids' play room.

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Fight back against the clutter and chaos that come with a disorganized playroom. Don't be overwhelmed by the myriad number of small pieces and parts that accessorize so many of your kid's toys. Step back, take a deep breath, and make a plan.

Just like everything else in life that needs to be organized, your kid's playroom needs compartments. If you can begin to compartmentalize the different parts of the mess, then eventually you'll be able to gain the upper hand over it. The biggest challenge can be developing a system that the kids understand. If you find it a constant struggle to keep your kid's rooms organized, then you may need some help putting together an plan that the kids will buy into.

Develop Easy to Read Bin Labels

In order for your kids to want to clean, it is going to need to seem as little like work as possible. If you can make it a game, then you have chance that they may willingly participate. Divide the bins that your kids keep their toys in and give the bins specific labels. There are several benefits to this process. First, if a bin is labeled specifically, say with a picture of a car on it, then the next time your child wants a car to play with, he or she won't dump out a bin of dinosaurs looking for a car. The child will just know where to find it. This reduces the overall mess from the start. Second, when it comes time to clean up, the kids won't struggle trying to figure out what goes where. It will be intuitive.

Assign Specific Tasks

Another way to maximize the effectiveness of bin labels is to color-code them. Along with pictures, make sure that you have bins of several different colors so you can make assignments. Kids aren't as likely to be overwhelmed if they can see that they aren't responsible for the entire mess. If one child is responsible for the red bins while another is responsible for the green bins, you may even be able to get them to race to fill them up. It is amazing how quickly cleaning can be done when it becomes competitive. Kids always want to win, no matter how mundane the task.

Buy Bins that can Stack or Roll

If you are pressed for space in your home and you often find that you need to use your playroom for other purposes, make sure that your bins are stackable. Not only will this maintain your ability to be organized, it will allow you to stack all of the toy bins in one corner, or even in another room, while you use the square footage of the playroom for another purpose. Some people even find it helpful to purchase organizational bins for their playrooms that are on wheels or casters. This makes it easy to roll them right down the hall or out into the garage when you need to get them out of sight for a time.

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