How to Manage Clutter When You Have Kids

Is there anything more daunting than keeping a house with one (or more) children clean and organized? Perhaps not, but thankfully there are ways to make it easier. It all starts with a functional home design and an effective organization plan.

Your home design helps (or hurts) your ability to manage clutter.

When you have kids, it’s amazing how fast a mess can appear out of nowhere. It’s as if there’s an endless supply of clutter just waiting to descend on any tidy areas of your home.

In reality, clutter flourishes when your home is ill equipped to handle the demands of a busy, growing family. When there’s no place for items to live and no plan for keeping things organized, craziness will surely ensue.

Top kid-friendly, clutter reducing home design features

You’d be surprised by how many areas of your home can be designed to not only look beautiful, but also make it easier to manage the organizational needs of a young family. It all starts by making your home more accessible for children.

For example, built-in step stools at the bathroom and kitchen sinks help prevent tiny arms from knocking over counter items as they try to reach up. Lower coat racks make it easier for kids to hang their coats rather than drop them on the floor. Ample closet hooks prevent kids from having to wrestle with hangers or fold clothes.

Beyond accessibility, designing your home to fit the day-to-day functional needs of your family is important. Some of my favorite kid-friendly home design features include…

• Mud room with organizational cubbies
• Opening up living areas with built-in organizational solutions
• Designated play area with kid-friendly desk space and toy cabinets
• Larger laundry room with storage space
• Storage solutions in the garage

Three clutter-free tactics to adopt today

Redesigning or remodeling your home with clutter management in mind is the most effective way to keep your kid’s stuff from getting out of hand. However, you’ll also need to implement and stick to an organizational strategy.

Here are some of the best clutter management tactics to try, starting now.

1. Organize like items together

One of the best pieces of advice for limiting clutter is to keep similar things organized together. That means keeping all school papers together in one spot, clothes in another, and games in another.

Having a “like-with-like” policy helps you and your family remember where everything is at all times. Making cleanup simple.

2. Contain the clutter — bins and baskets are your best friend!

No matter what type of storage areas your home currently has, I recommend using bins and baskets to keep kid items contained and organized. You and your kids can easily toss their stuff into a bin, making cleanup a breeze.

If you’re not quite sure where baskets and bins make sense in your home, here are some of the most common areas to put them to use:

• Closets
• Play areas
• Kids bedrooms
• Bathroom

3. Clean as you go and purge often

Avoiding a massive clutter pile up means getting your entire family to take an active role keeping things clean. Encourage your kids to clean up one mess before starting another. With your simple organizational structure, picking up after themselves will be easy – all they’ll have to do is toss their items in a bin or hang things on a hook.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to purge your house of kid clutter a few times a year. Around Christmas and birthdays is best, since you’ll likely be adding new stuff to old stuff during this time.

Putting it all together

Families who use a combination of kid-friendly home design features and simple organizational tactics have the best chance of effectively managing clutter in their home. Though these two strategies can work on their own, using them together is the sweet spot in clutter management.

Erin Davis is owner of Mosaik Design & Remodeling in Portland Oregon. For more information and tips visit http://mosaikdesign.com/ or contact her at erin@mosaikdesign.com.