5 ways to organise your children’s rooms

I often get asked how my house is so tidy especially my children’s rooms as when they appear here or on Instagram, they tend to be picture perfect. Well let me let you into a little secret – they are not always tidy. Believe me, right now they are all a total mess! But there are some things I do which help with the organisation and that also help us to tidy up super quick.

Everything has a place

We have lots of different ways to store the toys such as plastic drawers from Ikea which we call the Doodle Drawers and prettier baskets which all have one type of thing in each. So we have a people drawer, a car drawer, a craft drawer, a Fisher Price vehicle drawer, a dinosaur drawer…you get the picture. The best thing about this is that a) the kids know where to put everything away to and b) when something is lost, they know where to look. Yes, sometimes this goes wrong as the odd thing ends up in the wrong drawer, but 9 times out of 10 things are in the correct place. You could label the drawers/baskets but we all know in this house what goes where.

Sort the artwork out regularly

Any parent will know that kids come home from school with a tonne of artwork – some amazing, some less so. They are all super proud of them but if you were to hang them all up, you wouldn’t see the walls! I have added clip boards to a feature fire place which acts as their art gallery. I try and take one off when a new one arrives, and just like in an art gallery, only the best gets displayed. The rest gets recycled with some great yet old ones getting stored in a memory box for the future.

Use vintage tins to store smaller items

I love my vintage tins and the kids have loads of them. These are great to store smaller items such as marbles, loom bands, chalks, makeup, hair bobbles etc. Just like the drawers in point one, everyone here knows what goes where (to be honest I bet you anything that my husband has NO idea!) so all gets put away properly. Plus they look so nice out on display and gives me an excuse to carry on collecting!

Clear out regularly

Our kids have a lot of stuff, boy it’s overwhelming how much. I think as we are so often in charity shops and at car boot sales, it has become so easy for them to pick up rubbish toys for 50p resulting in so much clutter. We regularly have a clear out especially before birthdays and Christmas time, giving away some to friends, charity shops or the the bin for the broken bits. My children have the selling spirit within and often try and sell their unwanted toys outside our house! (Last time I found a 1968 Happy Apple in the selling pile outside our house worth £20 with a sticker on it for 50p – I had a small fit!)

Get the kids to tidy up!

This sounds either obvious or ridiculous depending on your kids but mine have to tidy up on a Sunday evening to get their pocket money for the week. This is a great routine to get into, but if you haven’t got any organisation then their tidying will probably mean shoving everything under the bed! Mine put the people into the people drawer, the plastic food into the vintage basket….like mummy like children!

There are other ways we organise the space, such as both of them having one half of this vintage desk each to store their work and pens. How do you organise your kids toys? Does it work? Do share!

Kate x