When you ask your children what they want their bedrooms to be like, they’re bound to tell you all about what kind of exciting themes and bunk beds they’d like, they’re unlikely to tell you all about their ideas for storage solutions… But worry not! Finding storage solutions that your kids will embrace rather than resist is easier than you think, and you might even be able to achieve the impossible and create fun ways to encourage tidying along the way!
Make the Most of Simple Solutions
Start the process by getting down to your child's eye level to help choose storage solutions that are genuinely practical and understandable for them by seeing their space, furniture, and possessions from their point of view. Look at your child's space, storage, furniture and possessions from his or her vantage point – what you see might surprise you!
While you might love that bedside table or cabinet that ties in with the rest of your home décor, adult storage solutions rarely translate well to children's needs. Sticky dresser drawers are hard for small hands to manage, folding closet doors pinch fingers and jump their rails when pushed from the bottom, and full size wardrobe rails are out of reach. That said, traditional toy boxes always end up housing a tangled jumble of mixed and scattered toy parts; so use floor-level open containers to hold toys, and open plastic baskets to store socks and underwear – and anything else that they’ll need to be able to access for themselves on a day to day basis.
It might sound simple but shelving really can solve a multitude of storage problems in kids’ rooms – while still keeping the floor clear for playtime. In a small room, the shelves could even go all the way to the ceiling to really maximise the available wall space, rather than filling the floor with clunky wardrobes and cupboards. You could even use wall mounted curtain rods in front of the shelves to hide stuff away while still keeping it accessible. These are also all options you can do yourself with the right tools, so check out Anglia Tool Centre for everything you need.
Create a System
The most important rule of storage solutions for kids? Make it easier for them to put their things away than to get them out. For example, store picture books as a flip-file, standing upright in a plastic tray. Your child flips through the books, makes their selection, and tosses the book in the front of the tray when he's done. Now compare this to a more traditional bookcase, where little fingers can pull down a whole shelf faster than they can replace one book. Build the effort into the getting out, not the putting away.
Take this one step further by labeling everything… and I mean everything! When it comes to keeping kids' rooms organized for the long haul, labels truly save the day. You can use the computer and a printer to create picture labels for younger kids, or a large-scale label maker to create labels for older kids. Now slap labels everywhere: inside and outside of drawers, on shelf edges and on the plastic shoebox storage containers that belong there, on boxes and bookcases and filing cubes. That way, playing match the label can be fun--and turns toy pickup into a game.
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