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I hope that these tips for organizing kids things is helpful today!
organizing kids things

It can be really hard to organize our kid’s things when we are busy, or when the kids are playing with their toys.  Trust me, with four kids, I can relate.

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This week, I am sharing a recap from my 40 days to an organized home.  The topic of organizing our kid’s things is always a popular one.  If you have kids, I am sure that you can see how the toys seem to multiply!   Toys and kid’s things can end up everywhere, which is great, because I want our kids to always be learning and exploring, but not being organized can make having a well-kept home very difficult.    I love having a kid-friendly home, but I want it to be organized at the same time.

These tips are the most-viewed posts from my series on having an organized home.  Good luck!  Let the organizing begin…  trust me, you will feel so much better once you have de-cluttered & organized your home!A woman and child putting toys into a large plastic container with text above them.
Here are my top posts to help you Organize your kid’s things:

1). Organize the toys in your living room: 
I love to have the living room clean and organized, because this is where we spend MOST of our time.   To do this, I try to keep the kid’s toys out of sight in the living room.  I do this in a few ways…

  • Ottomans – I have storage ottomans in our living room. They fit a lot of toys and they are great for hiding them. It makes for very easy clean-up because the kids just throw their toys in there and put the lid on. It takes less than two minutes!
  • I also keep books and art supplies downstairs.
  • I keep most of the toys in their room or in the playroom.
  • I make cleaning up fun by giving the kids the kid-shopping cart and they just drive it around, picking up toys and take them back to the toy box in the playroom, or to the ottoman in the living room.
  • HERE are a few more living room tips

 

2). DIY  Mudroom bench:

Make-a-mudroom-bench1
This organizing tip is definitely one of my favorites because this is KEY to organization in our home!    Our DIY mudroom bench  (its not really in our mudroom, because we don’t have one!) will organize your coats, backpacks and shoes.   If it weren’t for this bench, I’m sure we would have a huge pile of shoes, backpacks and coats either thrown in a closet somewhere or thrown in a pile by the door.
Before we built this, we were using the coat closet by our garage door, since we came in through the garage.  There is a guest room near the back entrance, but I didn’t want to convert a whole room into a mud room, so we had to think outside of the box.

My husband decided to make a mudroom bench for me. (He can make just about anything!)  He took a corner of the wall and decided that we could use that spot.  You an see the garage door beside our “Mud Room” area.  We can just walk in and immediately put everything away.    You can find the instructions to make it here.

 

 3). Keeping your home kid-friendly is KEY!
Kid friendly home
My home is rarely spotless because I have kids and we like to play!  However, it is organized and I would consider it clean, for the most part.
Today our kids had EVERY SINGLE pillow from EVERY SINGLE room of the house all piled up in our living room, as they made their daily “fort”. They had blankets thrown over it and secret passageways in it. You see, just because a home is “organized”, it does not mean that it is always “picked up”.   If you walked into my home when my kids are awake, you would see Superhero costumes on the ground, cut up paper on the table from the kids making crowns to be a King, forts in our living room, sippy cups on the table and kids running around.

You would hear: Laughing, Feet running on the ground, whining (of course!), phones ringing, kids talking in their “make-believe” voices.     As my Mom said, when we were talking about this post: If your house is like a showcase all of the time, but your children aren’t comfortable in it, what is the point?

 

4). Organizing your kid’s closets

  • Tip 1: My best tip is to add extra storage.
  • Tip 2: Use a hanging organizer or sweater organizer
  • Tip 3: “Double” the space with a rod-doubler like this one:
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  • Tip 4- get an over the door organizer like this one:
    71DM7M4-PmL._SL1500_
    See the rest of the closet-organizing tips here.

 


5). Organizing hair bows
(several different ways of doing this)
There are a lot of ways to organize hair bows, from throwing them all into a basket, to making a hair-bow organizer out of an oatmeal container.  You can see all of the ways right here. 

6). Organizing kids CUPS
I like to keep our kid’s cups in a big basket that I keep in one of the doors in our cabinet (in the island).  This is the easiest way for us, because the kids can just take the basket over to the dishwasher when unloading the dishwasher.  They throw the cups in and they are plastic, so they don’t break.   When they need a drink, they don’t need to ask me, they just grab a cup.  Even our two year old can get her own cup and bring it to me, so we don’t have to go back and forth with which cup she wants.

7) Organizing their bowls & plates
I do a similar layout with our bowls and plates.  We have drawers designated to holding each one of these.  One drawer in the kitchen hold their plates.  One drawer holds the bowls and one drawer holds snack cups.


8). Organizing outdoor toys
I have found some great ideas online for organizing outdoor toys – from using an old sandbox (this is what we do) to using a sports caddy, like this one:
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You can see the other ideas here. 

9) Organizing Kid’s Rooms
Organizing your child’s room is all about making it easy for them to keep it organized.   Have baskets in the closet, keep toys in reachable areas, so they can clean them up when they are done.  Overall, stop doing THIS for your kids!    You can read more organizing bedroom tips here.   Ps- keep them clean with this one rule that works like a charm in our house: Teaching kids to clean their room 

10) Organize your play room (or make one!)
You can easily add some organizing storage areas like this into any room to make it a playroom:
toybox
Or you can turn a guest room into a playroom by making a Wall- bed like the one that my husband and dad made for our playroom:
DIY WALL BED - UNDER $150

You can use pallets to hang on the walls as toy boxes, use picture frames to hang on the wall to hold your board games, use behind the door organizer to hold barbie dolls or super-heros.   You can really do so much with a little creativity!  Find more playroom ideas here.

This book might be helpful- it is all of my organizing your home series bundled into one easy-to-read ebook:
FREED FROM CLUTTER - BECKY MANSFIELD

I hope that this post was helpful!  Thank you for reading.   Here are some more posts that you might like:
how to de-clutter your home
chores

Board with Chores Make them fun again!!

Hi there!

I’m Becky, a former elementary school teacher turned certified child development therapist and blogger. I work at home with my husband and together we are raising (and partially homeschooling) our four children in the Carolinas. I love diet coke, ice cream, and spending time with my family.

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18 Comments

  1. need ideas for storing shoes/boots/skates/ etc….when have two girls sharing one room and they have lots of them!!! no room under bed due to one mattress is under the one bed….gets rolled out at night…thanks

    1. I keep our “little toys” in a pretzel container – one of those ones with the screw on lid (I think it was a Snyder’s container – we get it at Sam’s club) – after the pretzels are gone, I wash it & re-use it for little toys. 🙂

  2. love ALL your ideas! Came across your post from seeing posted over at Tiny Tots Adventures fb page. Pinning!!

  3. Looking for organizing ideas for Legos. And lego sets that all came together to make one item. My son has made the set and he is ready to put it away, but may want it out again–so need to organize sets