37. A Room of Their Own — Simple and Cozy
Many parents I speak to complain about their children's bedrooms as the worst rooms in the house. When I ask why, I get a multitude of reasons: The room is too small; everything is shoved in the closet; he never picks up his clothes; he keeps stepping over stacks of things on the floor. Ultimately, the parent is not in control of the child's bedroom, especially once the child becomes a preteen or teenager. After all, we have to give them some privacy and some responsibility. To deal with the messy bedroom, some parents choose avoidance. They simply close the door and don't look in. Well, that's one approach. Another is to help your child identify problem areas in his bedroom, design a room that is set up for his comfort and efficiency, insist that he straighten his room on a regular basis, and then let him be. Now which approach sounds like that of an organized parent?
If you think that it's easier to be organized when you have one child with his own bedroom and bathroom, think again. Sometimes too much space is a problem. One of my fellow professional organizers in NAPO, Diane Albright of All Bright Ideas, relayed a story to me about one of her young clients. Diane had been called in to organize a girl whose mother had just ordered new furniture to accommodate her daughter's growing wardrobe. Not surprising, because we all know how teenage girls love clothing. But as Diane started to pull out the clothes and sort them, she and the client were in for a big shock. Hiding in the recesses of this girl's current dressers were forty-five tank tops, 150 T-shirts, plus numerous pairs of jeans and sweaters. When they entered the bathroom to do the same sorting technique, they found thirty bottles of shampoo! The only reason this mother-daughter duo had reached this point was that when the daughter needed something, they simply purchased it instead of searching through what she already had to find what she needed. Obviously new furniture was not the answer. Instead they needed to purge the excess and arrange it so this overbuying wouldn't happen again.
Another organizer, Sanka Coyle of reSolutions Organizing & Design, relayed to me a story about one wealthy family who had so many extra rooms in the house that they allowed their child to move into a guest room if her bedroom got too crowded and cluttered! The organizer was called in when the family finally ran out of open bedrooms.
If your child's bedroom has reached a stage of critical mass, meaning it's just so cluttered that neither one of you knows where to start, take some time to overhaul this room using my CPR process (see Chapters 20 and 25). This is a great Saturday morning project that can take anywhere from two to six hours depending on the size of the room and the amount of stuff in it. Plan for this project by choosing the day and time with your child. Have your spouse or someone else occupy the other children if you have them. Look at this project as an opportunity for some one-on-one time with your son or daughter. On the day you choose to organize, make sure you have trash bags or boxes handy. Put on some music that your child likes, have snacks and drinks at the ready, and then get down to business.
Make sure the goals for this project are clear to your child. You are not just cleaning his room. At the end of your Saturday organizing session you should have:
To get started, you are going to need some room to work. So if floor space is limited, look for any large items that you would like out of the room and move them first. Then you can begin to categorize. Pick a corner of the room. (It's best to pick the worst corner.) Start taking everything off shelves, dressers, and walls. Keep like things together as you make piles on the floor or bed. Think in big categories first and don't get caught up spending a lot of time on little items found in a junk drawer or in desk drawers.
As you categorize, you may want to purge simultaneously. Purged items can fall into several categories themselves, for instance:
Make sure each of these categories is clearly labeled so you don't have to guess which pile is which. Once all the items in the room have been categorized, have your child take a look at the piles and ask himself, “Do I have too much of one thing?” and “How much do I really need?” Then purge some more from those categories. If he is having trouble deciding what to keep and what to purge, use the “fire” rule.
Absolute of Organizing Your Family: To prioritize, use the “fire” rule. Ask your child, “If there were a fire, what five things would you want to save?”
Another way to get past a sticking point in the purging stage is to ask your child what he would like to keep. In my example story, the organizer asked her client to choose her favorite fifty of the 150 T-shirts instead of asking her to part with 100. If you find that clothes are the biggest problem, you may want to save that project for another day. Get them into the closet or dresser, and if there is overflow, put those clothes in a box. After dealing with all the other items in the room, you can tackle the clothing. Refer to Chapter 9 for this project.
The final step of my CPR process is rearrange. This is the step where you can plan out your bedroom just like an interior designer. Think about the function of your child's bedroom, how he really uses it now, and how he might like to use it in the future. If you want to get creative, you can make a paper model of the room. I use a simple method of measuring the room and converting feet to inches. So I draw a room that is 10' × 15' on a piece of paper that is 10″ × 15″. On that sheet of paper, mark where the doors and windows are. Now, measure all the big furniture and use the same scale to cut out shapes of colored paper to represent the furniture. Next you can plan out the arrangement of your room.
To make a plan, use my Space Planning Worksheet in the appendix.
Decide on the function. The first thing you and your child need to decide on is the function of the room. Obviously, the bedroom is used for sleeping. However your child might have additional functions in mind. Some of these might be: reading, doing homework, practicing hobbies (like music, art, building models), playing with toys, watching TV, or using video games. When you are discussing this with your child, make sure you limit the functions to three, or else the room may become too cluttered. Then you need to make sure all the items in the room support those functions, nothing more, nothing less.
Absolute of Organizing Your Family: Give your children a few options that you can live with, and let them choose.
Define what's working and what's not. Following the Space Planning Worksheet, write down what you like about the room. In your rearranging step, make sure you don't change the good things.
What don't you like? That's where you focus. Can your problems with the room be fixed by moving some things out of the room or into the room? I recommend moving things out first.
When arranging a bedroom for your preschooler or elementary schooler, think simplicity. The more you have going on in there, the more likely it is to get disorganized. Have one container for toys if you want your child to play in his room. Likewise, have one bookshelf for storing books. With a tall bookshelf, you can use the top for display items and the bottom for items that your child wants access to. A beanbag chair is nice if he wants to sit on the floor to read or play. A desk is a good idea if you want your child to be able to write or draw in his room. The drawers in the desk are also a good place to keep supplies and completed drawings. Don't forget wall space, too. You can hang up artwork in clear plastic frames, which make it easy to update and change pictures. You could also hang a bulletin board above the desk so your child can post pictures or a calendar. If you have a lot of knickknacks that your child wants to display, small display shelves work well. You can always change what is displayed from time to time to give the room a little face-lift.
When your children get older, their bedrooms become more of a retreat for them. Therefore, the room may have to serve different functions and may require more stuff. Start with the basics: a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a bookshelf, and then see how much space you have for additional items. If you like, you can set up a little entertainment center with a TV, stereo, video game console, and beanbag chair. If you have the space for a second dresser or armoire, the second one can be used for out-of-season clothing or clothing to grow into. Putting the dressers and a mirror near the closet creates a little dressing zone. At this age, your child also may have more items they consider memorabilia. I think steamer trunks are ideal for storing these items. When the trunk is out in the room, it's easy to place items in it, and it can serve as an extra table or bench. If you don't have the room to leave it out, you can tuck it under a bed or in a closet. The desk, bookshelf, and bulletin board go together to create the homework zone. Finally, you may need a “drop zone.” The older they get, the more stuff they need to drop when they come home from school. I like the idea of a coat tree or hooks on a wall to make it easy to put away their everyday items such as jackets, purses, ball caps, and sports or activity bags. For any bedroom, make sure that you have good lighting for reading and doing homework, and don't forget open space. No one can relax in a room that is jammed from floor to ceiling. You have to work with the space you have and set realistic expectations. Use the scaled-down drawing to play around a little bit with the arrangement. Then make sure you have some strong helpers when you are ready to move furniture.
Once the big stuff has been arranged, you can focus on the little stuff. First consider the containers you have on hand. Shelves, baskets, bins, and plastic containers can all be used for storing items in the room. If you find that you need more containers, decide what size and what kind you want and write those down on a shopping list. Here are some suggestions on where to keep the little stuff that can sometimes take over a child's bedroom:
By allowing your child one little container to hold all his small stuff, you are essentially containing the clutter. These organizers will need to be cleared out once they get too full or when your child can no longer find what he needs.
Make sure that your new containers make it easy to clean up. Simple instructions work well with all children. Be specific. Telling your child to put books on the bookshelf, toys in the toy box, dirty clothes in the hamper, and clean clothes in the drawers or closet is preferable to just saying, “Clean that room!” If there are certain things that your child likes to leave out because the items are used every day, set aside space on a rack or shelf for them. When you make it easy for your child to keep these items picked up and off the floor, you are working with him to create a functional organizing system. Let him know when you expect him to get things back to normal in his room. This might be a daily straightening up in the morning or evening, or a weekly task to keep things under control.