Children have a different approach to their living spaces, and aren’t we all aware of it! While our kids are as diverse in their approach to clutter as adults tend to be, there are a number of unique issues that crop up in their rooms when it comes to clutter. For one thing, when you start decluttering your child’s room you have to understand the difference between a play space and a living space.

You may be familiar with this concept from your own experience: think ‘crafting corner’, ‘tool shed’, ‘sewing room’ or ‘man cave’… whichever you choose, those are what I would call play spaces. They are meant to be used for a particular activity and the rules to what is considered clutter-free and organised can be very different from your living room, kitchen or home office. For one thing it is much more acceptable to leave things lying around that you intend to use again to finish an ongoing project.

Safety hazard

For one thing, clutter can form a safety hazard in any household: a corridor with books, papers, boxes and the like piled high against one or both walls will create serious limits to mobility and is prone to collapse at some point, especially if items are being removed from the lower part of the piles. People have been found dead under collapsed piles of clutter more often than you would want to imagine! Just having clutter sitting in often used passages forms a tripping hazard! Imagine someone already has limited mobility trying to navigate around objects that are sitting in the way every single time they pass by. You probably agree that it’s only a matter of time that that person will trip, get hurt or even break something in the process.

I’ve mentioned the necessity for things to have a proper home of their own on more than one occasion. Imagine that you live in a place without an address: if your friends wanted to visit you they’d have to knock on every door to find you. They might know approximately where you are, but it would still be a huge waste of time and energy. The same goes for any of your items. You might find it in the end, because you have looked far too long in all the likely (and increasingly unlikely) places, but if it has a specific home (an ‘address’) you will find it directly.