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How often have you screamed at your children to clean their bedrooms? Usually it's when the floor is littered with toys, clothes and books and you can't walk in there without tripping over something. You feel overwhelmed and cranky by the sight of it. If looking at the mess makes you feel overwhelmed imagine how your children feel, remember that rooms look bigger to a child, so a messy bedroom will look worse to your child than it does to you. Rather than get angry and make this a horrible task for you and your children, help your child organize their rooms and keep it clean.

The first step is to resist the temptation to race in with gritted teeth and a garbage bag mumbling "if you can't keep this room clean, I'll throw everything in the bin!" This is not going to help the situation. Instead help your children to learn organizational skills and methods to keep their room tidy. Look at this situation as a learning opportunity for your child. It will be a valuable lesson that will stay with them for life.

The second step is to get down to your child's level. The room looks different closer to the ground. Look at the furniture, the storage and your child's toys. Do you have high shelves? Your child may be able to get their toys off the shelf but have trouble putting them back again.

The third step is to sort it, store it and make it simple. Children's bedrooms are often small, sometimes shared with other siblings and most often lack built in storage. Yet these rooms generally house out of season or out grown clothes, used and unused toys and all matter of bits and pieces. Kids can't keep their rooms tidy if their wardrobes are crammed with clothes, their drawers are so jam packed that they won't close and their toys take up every square inch of floor space.

Sort clothing first - Store out of season clothes elsewhere, bag up outgrown clothes and give them to charity or store them elsewhere if you have younger children. Because we have 4 kids and the 3 eldest are girls, we have 4 huge 100 litre plastic storage boxes full of out grown and out of season clothes ready to be passed down.

Next make it simple - does your daughter really need 15 sun dresses? Keep the favorites and bag up the others for charity or store elsewhere. I would go as far as to get your child in there to tell you what she or he doesn't like. If they are anything like my kids they have clothes that they hate and will never wear, so they just sit in the wardrobe taking up valuable space.
Your child will

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