I’ve always been a neat freak. Then I had children. Suddenly, my neat and tidy world was overtaken by baby gear, plastic toys, messy spills and the inevitable chaos that comes along with the beautiful little creatures who steal our hearts. My older two children are now 9 and 12 and they have learned to clean up after themselves for the most part. My third child, however, is now 14 months old. She has an angelic face, a contagious laugh, and shares a few traits with the Tasmanian devil from Looney Tunes. While adorable, full of life, energetic & fun, she often reminds me of Pigpen from Peanuts. She loves playing with water, toilet paper, (the 2 combined is even better!), mashing bananas into the carpet, and can make my house look like robbers just invaded in about 10 minutes flat. I’m talking pulling everything out of the drawers and cabinets and leaving a trail of puffs all over the house for others to step on leaving a million tiny crumbs.
You may be thinking, why even try to maintain an organized home when you live with such creatures? Having educated my older 2 children in Montessori school, I know that organizational skills can be taught from a very early age. Maria Montessori’s theory was that children thrive in a “prepared environment” — a calm, beautiful and ordered space in which to explore and learn. And while my toddler is still in the destructive phase, I am starting to see her take pleasure in rebuilding and cleaning up. So this is progress. The house still looks like a bomb went off most days but with these simple tips, you can restore order caused by chaos (e.g. small children) easily and quickly.
1.) PURGE. Get rid of everything that is not useful or beautiful. Be ruthless. Take a box and go through one room in the house per day of the week and remove any unnecessary items. Feel free to use Marie Kondo’s method if you are on the fence about whether to keep something by asking yourself whether it “sparks joy”. The point here is that the less you have, the less time you will have to spend cleaning and organizing it. While children’s toys may take over the house for a bit, having toddlers and small children is a great time of life to keep your decor very minimal and simple.
2. BASKETS. Place large woven baskets strategically around the mudroom, entryway and main living areas. Label these baskets by category: toys, donations, shoes, hats, etc. Anything that causes unsightly clutter (as is the case with most baby toys) goes in a basket. Serena and Lily sells beautiful Senegalese baskets that hold a lot of stuff! Also Target has a great selection of baskets. You can begin to teach your child how to clean up by putting things back in the basket when they’re done playing. If you sing the clean up song and clap, they’ll think it’s a fun game!
3. MAKE SURE THERE’S A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING. Take the time to buy some drawer organizers and then organize those drawers and label everything so everyone in the family knows exactly where the scissors, or tape or chapstick are kept. Do this slowly over time. You can usually do one drawer in less than 30 minutes and I promise you will feel immense satisfaction when it’s done!
4. CLEAN SWEEP. Take 15 minutes at the end of the day to do a clean sweep. Use this time to purge any toys with missing pieces, or that are broken or that your children no longer play with. Same goes for clothing, shoes/hats that no longer fit. That’s what the donate basket is there for!
5. RELAX. Go easy on yourself. Your house will not look Pinterest perfect during this short and fleeting time when your children are little and that’s OK. The key is that it is usually within 10-20 minutes of being well-ordered again.
6. DELEGATE. With your organization systems in place, it’s now easy for anyone to restore order to the house because there’s a place for everything and everyone knows where things go. So let someone else do the end of the day clean-up while you relax, do yoga or sing songs to your little Tasmanian devil who (of course) transforms back into an angel right before bed.
