How to Organize a Child's Room for Cheap

Nothing looks better than a nice, tidy, organized child's room—but if you aren't careful, you can spend hundreds of dollars on organization systems and furniture. The following steps will tell you how to organize your child's room for cheap. All it takes is a little creativeness. And once your child's room is organized—he may be encouraged to keep it that way so that he can find the things he is looking for.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pop-up laundry bin or basket
• Trash can
• Shoe organizer
• CD holder
• Book ends or small bookcase
• Shoe boxes or cheap bins
• Large folder
• Storage bags
• Dry erase board
• Stickers (for younger children)

1. Purchase a pop-up laundry bin for your child's clothes. These are relatively cheap, durable and fit nicely into a corner or a cabinet. No more large, square plastic bins. These have handles and can be willingly toted by your child to the laundry room. Your child is much more likely to make sure her clothes get into a bin if it's in her own room.

2. Find a small trash can for your child's room. Once again, small trash cans fit nicely into snug corners and remind your child that there is no reason for trash to be on the floor. It may be a long walk to the kitchen trash, but not in his room.

3. Find a small shoe organizer. You can find either a hanging one that goes over the closet door, one that hangs over the clothes bar in the closet or one that goes on the floor. Whichever kind you can find will work. A shoe organizer will encourage your child to put up her shoes and not leave them all over the house.

4. Buy a CD holder, preferrably one that holds about 50 CDs and closes. Your child can store his games that are on disks, movies and music CDs in this one case. This will eliminate having game boxes and plastic music and movie cases all over the house.

5. If your child has many books, you may want to find either a pair of cheap bookends and stack them on top of a dresser or purchase a small bookcase to stack her books in. If the space is limited in your child's room, you can buy a few of the storage boxes, place the books inside and slide them underneath the bed.

6. For knick-knack toys you can use sturdy shoe boxes or purchase a few cheap bins to put them in. Place the larger toys in the closet on shelves or in a large toy box.

7. If your child is an artist and likes to draw, she will most likely have papers everywhere. You can find a large folder like an accordian folder to put them in or a large storage box. Supplies such as crayons, scissors, glue and markers can be stored in it or put into Ziplock storage bags.

8. Make sure that dresser drawers are organized. You can mix and match them any way that you like, but make sure your child understands the order. It will probably take some time to get used to the order, so be patient as your child makes adjustments.

9. Organize the closet by either matching outfits together or putting pants on one side and shirts on the other. If your child goes to school and wears a uniform, try to place those in a separate area. If you don't have the closet space to separate things, try using color hangers to color code. For example, school uniforms are on blue hangers, red hangers are for play clothes and green hangers are for dress outfits.

10. To keep your child ultimately organized, try hanging up a dry erase board on his wall that contains his routine and responsibilities. This will help keep him on track daily with what he should be doing. You can use a wall chart for younger kids and let them put stickers according to tasks they complete. This will encourage and motivate the child to keep doing well.

Tips & Warnings

• You can find a lot of these items at garage sales, thrift stores, dollar stores or on Freecycle.
• Reward your child for keeping her room organized. This will make your job much easier.
• It's a good idea to bring in a large bag with you when you start organizing. If you find things that your child does not want anymore or simply does not play with, put them in the bag to sell or give away.
• If your child collects Yu-Gi-Oh! cards or other playing cards, buy a specific card holder book to keep them organized.

Resources

• Freecycle

[anixon84]

on 11/11/2008 Wonderful article and great ideas, we use many of them ourselves!