If you want to eliminate chaos in the children’s room and keep things tidy, you need a clever system and enough storage space. Easier said than done? Here are a few tips and tricks on how to – well, let’s say – get closer to the dream of the perfect children’s room.

Colorful and chaotic: the children’s room is a room for compromises. Smaller children in particular need enough space for play and imagination, while older children need a cozy retreat. But what to do with all the toys, Lego bricks, flying socks, books and school supplies? And how can you motivate children to tidy up themselves and keep things tidy? We have put together a few rules to ensure that children and parents alike feel comfortable in the playroom. A little tip in advance: Realistically, you should throw your idea of ​​a tidy children’s room overboard, it’s easy on your nerves – and those of your offspring.

Create clear storage space

Chaos in the children’s room arises when toys cannot be found at first glance or are difficult to reach. If the classification system is not intuitive or too complicated, the child will start searching – and this should be prevented at all costs. Because anyone who finds their favorite cuddly toy in the furthest corner of the children’s room has dumped at least one Lego box on the way there, cleared out two shelves and rumpled up the bed. The solution: stow away toys that are easily accessible and clearly arranged – for young and old alike. A good trick to make the room as child-friendly as possible: put yourself in the child’s perspective, i.e. set up the room kneeling, so to speak. In this way, shelves, drawers and boxes with things that are used frequently and loved dearly can be placed directly be placed at the child’s eye level.

Children need space to express themselves. It doesn’t matter that your empire is huge or perfectly designed, but it should be well structured. When planning, it helps to think in zones: the room should have play, study and rest areas that are clearly separated from each other and not mixed up. This helps keep everything in place. Incidentally, even the smallest area can be divided up well with the help of simple tricks: Self-designed platforms or curtains that can be used to separate niches are ideal for defining cozy corners or building areas, for example. A change in wall color also works to draw such symbolic boundaries.

Use every niche in the room

Not only wardrobe, chest of drawers and shelves can be used to store toys, cuddly toys and books. The space under the bed, the wall up to the ceiling or niches are also suitable for storing things. You should consider how often something is used: Toys that are used a lot, school supplies that are used every day or clothing must be within easy reach for the child. Toys that are not used as often as the Carrera track or books that have already been read are allowed to wander into the more remote corners of the playroom.

Even the smartest system of order cannot be maintained in the long term if there is too much of everything. But if you search the web on Pinterest or Instagram for the hashtag #decluttering (decluttering), you get the impression that decluttering is rocket science and you feel overwhelmed by the mammoth task.

In fact, it’s that simple: Owning more things means having to tidy up, dust off and care for more. So if you want to save time, you should regularly get rid of things together with the children. Broken toys or jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces are disposed of, books that are in good condition, toys that are no longer used and clothing that the child has outgrown can be donated to the social department store or sold at the flea market. Baby toys find grateful buyers among the next generation of parents in the circle of friends. If the child finds it difficult to part with cuddly toys, small treasures or drawings and handicrafts, the famous Marie Kondo method can be used: Do you enjoy it or can it go away? Even little ones

understand that.

Organize children’s rooms properly: Two approaches

Children find their way around better in a well-structured room. And once objects have found their right place, it is much easier for them to keep things tidy. But what is the system for assigning things to their place? The most common way is to sort them by categories. For the children’s room this means: books stand next to books, cuddly toys and dolls find space together in a large basket, puzzles share a shelf with the board games. But there’s another idea for sorting toys, and that’s by color. What sounds absurd at first, is made by the tidying professionals of “The Home Edit” just celebrated for smaller children. They are convinced that even the youngest can see through a system of order and adhere to it permanently, as long as it comes across intuitively. And that’s sorting by color for children who can’t read yet.

With boxes against the chaos in the playroom

Plenty of storage space helps to keep things tidy in the playroom, distributed over large closed cupboards, drawers and shelves. Mobile boxes and baskets are also a blessing, so that the worst of the mess can be quickly removed in the evening. Toys distributed in baskets are not only pretty to look at, they often also follow an educational approach: Based on Montessori pedagogy, boxes and baskets in the children’s room help to educate children to be independent and to develop in a child-friendly environment. True to the motto “Help me to do it myself”, even the little ones can find their toys themselves, reach them easily and put them back in their place later. Open baskets and clear boxes have the advantage that the content is easy to see. You can also write or label the storage boxes or stick pictures of the contents on them. So every child knows immediately which toy belongs where and can tidy it up independently.

In many children’s rooms there is a veritable flood of toys – logical, since the interests of the children are constantly changing. Nevertheless, the little ones often feel overwhelmed by the opportunities they have to play in their own room. In the end, this also has an effect on the order in the children’s room: Anyone who starts something and is distracted by other things does not immerse himself in the game, but switches from one to the next. The result: a half-assembled toy train next to a tea party with cuddly toys on a 500-piece puzzle. If you have space in the (dry) basement, in the attic or in a large closet, you could use it to swap different toy categories. If Duplo is very popular, the dolls are put away for a short time together with the doll buggy and doll clothes. After a few weeks they swap: Dolls back in the children’s room, toy train in the basement. On the one hand, this creates space and order in the room, but on the other hand, it also ensures that things that have been recovered are seen with completely different eyes and that the toy is valued more again.

More tips: Motivate children to clean up

Children like to imitate all the time, especially their parents and older siblings. Anyone who manages to show that tidying up and keeping things tidy can be fun is a big step closer to the dream of a tidy children’s room. This can be done with clean-up games or a little dance, with songs, loud music or a ritual, integrated into everyday life and imitated by the children. Without pressure and coercion, this creates a positive relationship with tidy rooms, where there is plenty of room for creativity, friends are welcome to play and you can get out of bed at night without stepping on Lego bricks. Children understand like this: It pays to keep order. After all, there will be much more time to spread new chaos.