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Last updated on August 22nd, 2023 at 09:05 am
Has the kid clutter taken over your house? Are there toys, books, artwork, and clothes everywhere?
Here’s my perspective on kids and their stuff in my house, just in case you need the affirmation:
This house is mine. I help pay the mortgage and I help with the maintenance. My kids do not have a right to take it over with their stuff.
You might not agree with that, so here’s something else:
You should have adult spaces in your home that are free of kid clutter. As parents, we need that mental break.
I make sure that our house does not get overridden by kid clutter because of my belief stated above and because I just go crazy when there’s stuff everywhere. (I literally can’t focus.)
Toys, lovies, books, and all kinds of things end up all over my house throughout the day. But by the evening rolls around, it’s all picked up and put away (by my kid) so hubby and I can enjoy some kid-free time.
Today, I’m sharing what I do to keep the kid clutter at a minimum and maintain the adult spaces in my home.
The things I do are not that difficult to start doing. In fact, you can start doing them today! So let’s talk about these super easy ideas for minimizing kid clutter.
The toys must be picked up and put away every night before bed.
One of the rules in my house (that’s actually one of my secrets to a tidy home) is that we clean up every night. I don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink or things out on the counters if I can avoid it. As my daughter’s gotten older, that means she can’t leave her toys and things out all night either.
I have to walk through the playroom each morning to get to my office, so I don’t want to start the day looking at a mess. (It messes me up, man!)
We’ll even take breaks throughout the day to pick up. Sometimes after an extremely messy clean up (usually because I’ve been in meetings for 2 hours straight), my kid will exclaim, “That’s so much better!”
Obviously if she’s been working really hard on a puzzle or something, that’s allowed to stay out, but everything else needs to return home.
Clean up tip! You ready?
One way you can make clean up easier is to have a basket to collect all the kid stuff throughout the day. At the end of the night, the kids can take the basket to where the toys are stored so they can put them away.
All the toys are kept in one room in the house.
I know not everyone has the space for a playroom, but we do and we use it.
Since I can’t sleep when I’m surrounded by clutter, I make sure my daughter’s room isn’t cluttered either. We only keep books in her room and all the toys are in the playroom.
Having everything in one room helps me keep inventory on what we have and what’s being played with. It makes it easy to clean up at the end of the day, plus it keeps any pieces of sets from getting lost.
If it doesn’t fit, then some of it needs to go.
I don’t have too many storage containers in the playroom for a reason. If we fill it up with too many things, there’s no room to play!
We have a cube shelf in the playroom where most of the toys are stored. I use both cube bins and clear containers with latches. The clear containers are great because my daughter can see the toys inside, so she’s more likely to play with them! For kids, it’s definitely “out of sight, out of mind.”
Once these bins run out of room, we have to decide on what’s gonna go. Sometimes I’ll decide to donate things she was never interested in or I’ll put some of the developmentally younger toys and books away for someday.
Purge often.
I don’t do toy rotations. I do toy reorganization. In other words, I like to rearrange the playroom a lot because I get tired of it being one way.
Just one of my many weird organizing quirks.
Moving things around a lot has its benefits. For one, it’s like everything is brand new to my kid, so she gets interested in things she hadn’t noticed in ages. Or I figure out she has absolutely no interest in certain things at all because she NEVER plays with them. Those can go in the donation pile!
I purge every single time I have the urge to rearrange the playroom. Maybe not the most logical, but it’s a purging system that works for me.
It’s worth saying that it’s totally ok to let go of “works of art.” This is so hard for many moms, but it is really ok to let go this go. You can definitely keep a few, but you don’t need every single one. If you’re keeping it for your kid to look at someday when they’re older, I’m sure they’ll appreciate a curated collection.
Another area is the kids clothes! …A must purge for every season! There’s a whole post dedicated to a system for organizing and purging kids clothes, and I promise you, it’s not as hard as you think!
Those are the really simple things I do to keep the kid clutter at bay. Make a few rules about clean up and storage and find a system for purging.
So, let me know! Are you going to start using these actions today? There’s no reason not to!
And if you want to set your kids up for the future with organizational skills, check out this post, “3 Skills to Help Your Preschooler Learn to Organize.”
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