Children rooms (1) – the theory

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.

Now transpose this to your child’s room: assuming you do not have a designated playroom for your kid (highly unlikely) I’m probably right in thinking that the child not only sleeps in this room and her/his clothes are kept somewhere in here, there will be stacks of toys and school stuff in here as well. You see, it’s multiple personality room! If you are an adult with an idea of decluttering, you might just identify this as a bedroom with added stuff in it, but that is far from true: it is a bedroom, a playroom AND a study, and all those needs have to be met in one single room. A parallel example could be a kitchen with a large dinner table in it: you might use the table for cooking, but by the time the food is prepared, that table has to be emptied and cleaned to be used for serving dinner. Or maybe a guest room that is used to store camping items. It only works for one of those things at any given time.

This multiple personality thing may just be one of the foremost reasons why your child’s room often looks like the result of an air strike! The three mentioned identities have strikingly different demands on a limited space, and it is important to keep that in mind when you intend to clean up or declutter.

• A bedroom should be peaceful, relaxing and calm to facilitate quieting down. Any distraction in the room is a bad idea, especially if the child is usually restless.
• A playroom is where fantasies come alive, where excitement thrives, it’s a place of noise and interaction with other the toys or other kids. Some toys (like puzzles or large built lego structures, etc) should be allowed to stay to be played with another day.
• In a study the child needs to be concentrating on learning things, be productive and not be distracted by toys, media or other members of the family.

You can probably see now why this is a tough order, as each function needs a specific setup for the room to serve its purpose. The ideal situation would be to separate the quieter functions (sleeping and studying) from the distraction of the active side of live, i.e. playing or hobbies. If there is any way you can move the play space somewhere else, I strongly recommend trying it out. If not, ideally there should be some kind of clear separation of the different areas using the arrangement of the furniture in the room. While it is entirely reasonable to have a bed and a desk in the same room, having a selection of toys in the room is a huge distraction and will not help keeping the room clutter-free either! At the very least, all the toys have to be stored out of sight when not in use to minimise the distraction created by them.

A couple of basic tricks to help you get some ideas:

• Make sure the desk is placed so the child cannot see the toys or the wardrobe, chest or shelves in which they are stored.
• Make sure the desk is big enough and comfortable, and that all the study materials are easily within reach, with enough space to properly put them away.
• Place the bed so that play space AND study space are not visible when lying on it. A good option is a box bed that has storage space underneath (preferably drawers!) and that is so far off the floor that the desk is not directly visible. That addresses several issues at once.
• Separate the play space clearly from the rest of the room. Do NOT try to declutter the play space as much as the rest of the room, but make it very clear that the rest of the room has to be clean (of clutter, that is). That creates an option to leave toys out to continue playing the next day.
• If the play space becomes a warzone, cleaning up that area should be handled as a separate issue from the rest of the room.

When it comes to decluttering the desk space, similar strategies to other rooms can be applied, but when we look at children’s wardrobes and play spaces, new strategies apply. Those will be addressed in parts 2 and 3 of this short series.

If you have enjoyed reading this, you may find these other articles interesting:

• Children's rooms: toy story
  
• Email correspondence: leading by example
  
• "Decluttering your life", a talk