Organizing your kid's closet: the basics for a tidier room

By organizing your kid's closet, you can help establish the basics for a tidier room and get them to keep it clean on their own. Here's a bit of know-how to achieve that goal.

Keeping your child's closet neat and clean is one of the most daunting tasks around the home. By making a few simple changes, you can tame the monster mess in your kid's closet and get them to keep it clean on their own.

Children aren't always naturally organized. Of course, we want them to keep their closets in order, but it's not fair to expect them to hang up their clothes if they can't reach the rod.

• It's worth the effort to lower the rod to no more than one metre above the floor. Once the rod is within reach of small hands, it's much easier for children to keep their things tidy. Besides, their tiny clothes will fit just fine in the smaller space.
• Place a low shelf just above the rod, and you have created a child-sized closet just for them.
• If you choose modular fittings at your local home improvement store, you'll easily be able to move them back up to the standard position when your children are teenagers.

There's a reason cubbies are so popular in schools: it's much easier for small children to use the open space to keep their things organized than to fiddle with knobs and latches to close things up.

• Place a small shoe organizer with a grid of 12 to 15 holes on the floor of your child's closet to hold not only shoes and boots, but also for off-season items like mittens, hats and baseball gloves.
• Consider adding several rows of 30-centimetre cubbies atop the newly lowered shelf. These cubbies can hold neatly-folded shirts and sweaters within reaching distance, and off-season clothes can be stored higher up and switched out when necessary.
• You can also use a small, open laundry basket on the floor of the closet as a hamper.

Teach your child to keep his or her clothing organized by providing a clear visual of what the closet should look like when it's clean.

• This is easily accomplished by snapping a photo of the clean closet and taping it to the inside the closet door. When you ask your child to clean up, tell them to match the picture.

For smaller children, you can be even more specific by taping a photo of the neatly folded and stacked contents of each cubby inside that cubby.

• By showing your child what you want, you can avoid a drawn out argument and tedious step-by-step instructions.
• You also set the stage for some important brain development: children who start visualizing organized systems will begin to internalize and apply them on their own, which is a major life skill. Educators call this executive functioning. Parents will be happy just to call it their magic home-organization trick.