As a parent of a 4-year-old girl (named Mia), I’ve gone through several iterations trying to find the best way to help her become a self-organized person and encourage her to play and work in a space where clutter won’t be the norm.
After having done some reading and talking to parents and teachers on organizing kids' spaces, I have realized a couple of things: the first one is that theory is much easier than practice, and the second one is that every family and house differ from each other. I mention this because what I will explain in this article is working in our house and I hope that it will become an inspiration or a resource to use it however you see fit in your house.
Limit the number of material
The more stuff we have, the more chances to create a mess. Not only that, but the more stuff kids have available at a time, the more overwhelmed and less focused they are. So, our first goal should be to reduce the amount of stuff our kids have available.
Mia spends her time mainly in the living room, the kitchen, and in her room. In the living room, Mia has access to 9 learning material at a time, a blackboard/whiteboard, and a table with paper and drawing tools. In her room, she has access to a dollhouse, a pretend kitchen (with 3–4 pretend food and 3–4 cooking utensils), and 3 toys of her choice. Last, in the kitchen, she has her own cooking station with a limited set of cooking utensils.
In order to have variety and exposure to different working material and toys, we rotate them. Every Monday Mia decides which material and toys she wants to have available from all the material in the storage room. My role as a parent is to make sure over the weeks she has exposure to material that works in different areas of development, so I will chime in as needed when she is picking her material. Even though the Monday routine gives some structure, she is free to trade her toys or learning material in the middle of the week.
Limit the space
Before we defined some rules on limiting the space, Mia would get material from the living room and scatter all the pieces all over the living room. This made it not just harder to pick up, but also reduced the amount of focus she had when using that material. That’s when we limited the space.
Mia now has a medium-size carpet that she can roll and unroll (it’s 120x80 cm) and whenever she wants to work on something, she pulls the carpet and works with the material on top of it.
For example, she works with a puzzle, the puzzle and all its pieces must fit within the limits of the carpet. This seems like a simple change, but if you think about it, you are limiting the potential of cluttering to a 120x80cm space.
Clean up ASAP
After Mia has used a toy or working material and she has finished working or playing with it, we encourage her to bring it back into where it was. Of course, sometimes she won’t feel like picking up right after. Once that happens, we try different options such as letting her pick it up later and being rigid when that time comes, or helping her to pick up (by creating some game, such as competing on who stores more puzzle pieces in the box).
In helping Mia picking up after herself, I realized that I was not picking up after myself several times (where she would call me out). So, this was a great exercise for me to become less messy too!
Conclusion
I would say that even though there is no scientific formula on how to keep an organized environment, the following one has helped our family:
less material + limited space + rapid pick up = less clutter
I hope you find these tips useful and try them. And as with anything, keep your mind open to observe and adapt as you see fit.
