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Kick Out the Clutter
How to Tame the Messiest
of Bedrooms
of Bedrooms
By Karen E. Baxter
What works for one child may not work for another, even within the same family, as Bockholt has discovered. "Both kids have a clothes hamper just inside their bedroom doors," she says. "Trae utilizes his, but I get the impression that Jessica's must be invisible, because it only gets filled when she's informed that it's time to shovel out her room."
Professional organizer Stephanie Denton often finds that preteens have outgrown their bedrooms, which can contribute to the disorganization. "The bedroom may have been set up for them at a younger age and hasn't changed," she says. Just because a system worked when you bought it doesn't mean it is necessarily the best system now.
It is a good idea if you have adjustable closet systems to move the shelves and bars every few years to meet the child's needs. Perhaps the child has more shoes and sweatshirts now and less dresses than she did a few years ago. If your child is now doing homework in his room rather than at the kitchen table, make sure he has a desk, chair and storage for books and papers, or he'll just end up sprawling everything out on the bed and floor.
Rolling plastic storage carts are particularly handy for school supplies, craft items and small toys like Legos or action figures and can easily be rolled in and out of the closet. Corkboard can be painted to match the room's wall color and be used to cover an entire wall to display posters, artwork and photos.
A stylish, more grown-up alternative to a toy box is to place an upholstered ottoman on rolling casters at the end of a bed. It willprovide lift-top storage and additional seating. "You can cover the ottoman in a fabric that goes with other furnishings, and when it gets ruined – and eventually everything in a kid's room gets ruined – you can recover the ottoman," Wiener says.
