You know the sight, right? An exciting snowdrift of presents heaped underneath the Christmas tree just waiting to be unwrapped…and become a pile of toys in the kid’s room! Where will they all go? Well, before Santa comes, you can get ahead of sleigh and clear some space for all of those lovely new toys and avoid drowning in them.
Make Piles
Put aside some time to go through everything in your child’s room, with your child. It’s important not to do this without them, as you’re going to meet resistance and tears. Go through everything in the room and make up 4 piles – Keep, donate, sell and dump. As you go through, you will find that the ‘donate’ pile gets quite big, usually full of duplicate toys or things that aren’t age appropriate or used any more. The dump pile should be reserved for broken toys or ruined clothes. Keep should only have things that are loved, used or still fit in it. The sell pile for many often ends up being the smallest.
Create Some Storage
Now that you’ve sorted through, you need to take your ‘keep’ pile and put it all back! But now, start thinking about how to store it effectively. Get your child involved in this and ask them where they think things should go. You won’t necessarily need to buy more storage solutions for this. Often it isn’t that you need to buy more storage, but instead you need more carefully edited things to put in them. Boxes, shelves and wardrobe storage are all great things to use, but if your child isn’t on board with where things are going, the room will get messy quickly, so let them choose how they want to organise their space.
Deal with the Piles
Now you’ve put away everything that’s to be kept, you need to sort out the other piles. If you don’t, you will quickly find your house becomes ‘clogged’ and some things might find their way back into the room they were taken out of! The dump pile should be put in the bin or taken to the local tip, and the donate pile should be shipped off to the local charity shop as soon as possible. If you have anything in the sell pile, give yourself a time frame (I suggest a week) to sell it, and if you have anything left after that time, take that to the charity shop too.
If you dread the thought of opening the door to the kid’s room, or the thought of Boxing Day and all those toys is making you cringe, you’re not alone! But instead of letting it all get on top of you (or under your feet), you can make some space and get ready for Santa’s sleigh delivery. For more information, get in touch with me today.