Clutter Busting For Kids by Rita Emmett

Here are tips to help you involve kids in clutter busting:

1. Cleaning their rooms involves making decisions. The more you help to simplify the room, the easier the cleaning and the decision-making becomes.
2. If toys, books, puzzles and games don’t have a happy home that the child can reach easily to put away, then, you’ve got clutter.
3. Put a large container (box or basket) on the closet floor for shoes, flip-flops and slippers. Another one is there for sports equipment, art supplies, Barbie dolls, or whatever.
4. Provide containers for different toys. When they don’t know where to put things, it’s hard for kids to keep clutter under control. Make it easy to put toys, clothes, and other items away.
5. Let children help label containers (they will be more open to using them). They can be as creative as they want with the labels — either with writing or drawing pictures. Or take photos of the child showing what goes in each container. Encourage them to “ham it up”, to hold the toy up to his face and exaggerate pointing to where it goes like we see in commercials. Have fun with it, and your child will be more open to making the system work.
6. Too many toys, puzzles and books? Pack some away to be brought out:
   • when a babysitter comes
   • for a long car ride
   • on a rainy day
   • when visiting children have left your child feeling used and abused
   • on a sick day
   • when your child just needs a “spirit lifter.”
7. Teach children to keep asking themselves, “Why keep broken toys, tired stuffed animals, books with torn pages or covers, games with broken or missing pieces?” Especially if they are no longer interested in these things.
8. When your child receives new toys, help them select old ones to clean up and donate to a local charity. Children love the feeling of helping others.
9. Don’t give space to games no one likes or games with broken or missing pieces.
10. Clear off furniture tops in the room so visual space is open, clear and clean.

© Rita Emmett, author of The Procrastinator’s Handbook; The Procrastinating Child: A Handbook for Adults to Help Children Stop Putting Things Off and The Clutter-Busting Handbook, is a “Recovering Procrastinator” and professional speaker. She can be reached at 847-699-9950 and email is Rita@RitaEmmett.com.

To subscribe to her free monthly “Anticrastination Tip Sheet” with quick short tips & ideas to help break the procrastination habit, go to the first page of her website www.RitaEmmett.com

And if you’d like more ideas to help you find balance in your space you will want to access the Get a Plan! Guide® to De-clutter & De-stress: A Dozen Ways to Decrease Your Clutter and Decrease Your Stress. This Get a Plan! Guide® will help you learn a dozen specific ways to start dealing deliberately with your clutter – and then experiencing a reduction in your stress.