Activities

So one of my resolutions this year is to get organized. Kick the Clutter is a weekly series I’ve started so that we can all get organized together! Who’s with me?

We’ll go step-by-step around the house until we’ve reached every nook and cranny and there’s nothing left to straighten up, donate or give away.

Kick the Clutter: Organize the Kids’ Rooms

Since we just tackled a majority of the toys last week in the office-turned-playroom, I figured we’d move to the kids’ rooms and finish the task.

The two biggest clutter magnets for us here are books and clothes. We keep a ton of books around for the kids (and I wouldn’t have it any other way), but boy, do we need a better way of keeping them organized.

Dig in and ditch the clutter

Toys: The kids are still pretty young, so it’s not often that they’re playing in their rooms on their own yet. That means most of the toys are in the main living areas and we have just a few toys in their rooms.

Those trusty fabric bins and sturdy bookshelves once again save the day for us in both kids’ rooms.

Books: Here’s one of our biggest clutter magnets. We have so many books for the kids that they can sometimes spill over from their intended storage, which is clearly not big enough. This isn’t a new problem and it’s helped to put half of their books tucked away in their closets. That also helps keep things fresh for them – and us – when we rotate them out.

The biggest problem in my son’s room was the bedside table. It (and the floor around it) just turned into a growing pile of books. Easy solution here… we traded the bedside table for one of the small bookcases that we removed from the living room, previously used as toy storage there.

Now we have plenty of space to keep books next to his bed. We also keep a few stuffed animals (you guessed it! In fabric bins!) on the shelf.

Book piles are big in our daughter’s room, too, but she’s too young to keep them tidy on a bookshelf yet. So we’ve just upgraded to a larger bin and will have to do a better job of rotating them as we go.

Furniture: The amount of furniture in both of the kids’ rooms is already at a good number. In fact, there was even a little extra breathing room, so we did the even exchange of the bedside table for the bookcase. And we brought our former coffee table into his room to be used as a train-puzzle-play table. We said we’d give it a trial run and if it wasn’t working out in there, then we’d donate it. So far I think he enjoys having a dedicated space to put puzzles together.

For my daughter’s room, she’s now finally old enough to have toys in her room, so the other small bookcase from the living room is now in her room, housing toys there.

Clothes: Our other biggest clutter magnet in the kids’ rooms is the clothing pile. I was able to keep on top of the clothes for one kid, but once the second one arrived (and a girl, no less!), things started to pile up a bit. I went through and packed away all the outgrown clothes that have been hanging around for my son. Our general rule of thumb has been to save one large bin of clothes per size per kid, so that if we were to have another baby, we wouldn’t have to buy clothes. Anything that doesn’t fit into that one bin, we give away. Now that we have two kids — and two genders — of clothing to keep track of, there is a lot going into storage. For now that’s just the name of the game, I guess, so for now, all I can do is just hope to keep them reasonably organized.

The “before” photo:

And the “after”…

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So one of my resolutions this year is to get organized. Kick the Clutter is a weekly series I’ve started so that we can all get organized together! Who’s with me?

We’ll go step-by-step around the house until we’ve reached every nook and cranny and there’s nothing left to straighten up, donate or give away.

Kick the Clutter: Checking In

We’re taking a breather this week, mainly to give me time to finish a couple more rooms to post about!

But it’s been about a month since we’ve started the Kick the Clutter series and I have to say… things are really turning around here!

I’d say we’re nearing the halfway point. We’ve hit the main living areas: the kitchen, dining room, living room and playroom/office. We still have the bedrooms to tackle and the laundry room to tackle. The pantry, the attic and the basement are all part of the plan, too. So yeah… we still have some work ahead of us.

But I’m VERY happy to say that so far we’ve been able to totally maintain all the progress we’ve made in each room.

It’s so much quicker to clean up each night, now that everything has its place.

In fact, I’ve even noticed that with less clutter, the kids are more independent (yes, they’re still only 4 and almost 2), but honestly, they’re both self-starters at cleaning up now that we’ve really been serious about getting organized.

Even the not-quite 2-year-old gets up from the kitchen table to grab a dishcloth and clean up a spill – as it happens. (Trust me, I know this may be a small blip in her development, but for now I’m going to enjoy every last minute of it!)

Most importantly, I think we’re all starting to feel just a little less stressed,

Next week, we’ll jump back into the de-cluttering posts, I promise.

Let’s keep track of our progress and share with others! It’s always easier when I get to hear what ideas are working for others. So please share your thoughts and progress with us throughout this series!

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