Welcome to the final week of closet organizing month! To recap for those who might have just stumbled upon the Organize and Refine Your Home Challenge, so far this month, we’ve decluttered and organized the linen closet, the hall closets, and our master closets. This week, it’s all about kids’ bedroom closet organization.
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This week’s challenge might be a piece of cake for you, or a lot of work; it all depends on how many kiddos you have! No worries…if you completed the master closet organization challenge assignment, you know the drill. We’re simply repeating the process you went through last week in a different space.
EVALUATE & PREPARE
If you have multiple kids’ closets in your home, make a plan and determine the order in which you’ll tackle each one. If one of your children receives hand-me-down clothing from another child, I recommend beginning with your older child’s closet first. That way, the clothing in that older child’s “too small” category can then be transferred to the younger child’s room and incorporated into that closet organization project.
One of the challenges of organizing kids’ clothing and shoes is that they grow like weeds. It requires constant Mommy vigilance to keep track of what items currently fit, what items your child has outgrown, and what items were purchased in a larger size for future use. I strongly recommend that one of your goals for this organizing project be to only keep items that currently fit your child in their closet. If you don’t already have a designated spot in their room for items that are too large or too small, now’s the time to create those spots.
By now, you’re an old pro when it comes to preparing for a decluttering session, right? So go ahead and grab your decluttering kit, and set up your Relocate, Donate, Sell, & Repair sorting bins. Also create a Hand-Me Down bin for clothing that will be passed on to another sibling, and a Too Big bin for larger-size items that are currently too big for your child.
EMPTY OUT & CLEAN
Pull every item out of the closet and onto your child’s bed. Clean the closet top to bottom by wiping off shelves, vacuuming/mopping the floor, and wiping those dust bunnies off of the baseboards. If your child has a large walk-in closet, you may need to empty out, clean and sort items one section of the closet at a time.
SORT & PURGE
Sort items by type. Some common kids’ closet categories include:
- Long sleeve shirts
- Short sleeve shirts
- Sweaters
- Sweatshirts
- Pants
- Skirts
- Dresses
- Sports uniforms or dance/gymnastics wear
- Shoes
- Accessories (belts, scarves, etc.)
At this point in the process, I grab my kiddo and have her put on a “fashion show” for me. For each category of clothing, she tries on any items that she hasn’t worn in awhile to determine if it fits. Remember, we’re only keeping clothing/shoes that currently fit in the closet.
The fashion show is also a great time to get an honest assessment from your kid about whether they will actually wear that sweater that’s been shoved in the back of the closet before they outgrow it. There’s typically a reason it was shoved back there in the first place. It’s too itchy, uncomfortable, or perhaps her friends deemed it uncool the last time she wore it to school. Into the Donate bin it goes!
If your house is anything like mine, your Relocate bin and trash bag will be overflowing by the end of your decluttering session. It’s always amazing to see the volume of toys, trinkets, and candy wrappers (yikes!) that surface each time we go through this process.
Once you’ve gone through all of your categories of items, stash your donations in your trunk, put the items in the Relocate bin away, take the trash out, and place the hand-me-downs in your younger child’s space.
ORGANIZE
At this point, you should only be left with the items that currently fit your kiddo and that you are confident they will actually wear. Bravo!
Just like you did last week in your master closet organization project, determine how you might improve upon the closet “skeleton”, based on your child’s needs {Click here for a detailed example of how I totally revamped my daughter’s closet with an Elfa Storage System}.
Use basic organizing principles to guide you as you put the various categories of items back into the closet. For items that don’t need to be hung, baskets and bins are a great storage option. In my daughter’s redesigned closet, we installed a drawer system that she uses to store shoes, purses, belts, camisoles and leggings. The drawers are further compartmentalized using a variety of smaller baskets.
Take advantage of any bare wall space by using hooks to store bathrobes, purses, and other accessories.
If the closet has a door, by all means use that vertical space to store shoes, accessories, hair accessories, or toys. My daughter is an avid trinket collector, so this is one of the spots designated for trinkets in her room. We used an over-the-door shoe organizer with category labels for each type of trinket (yes, she even has one designated for “snakes”).
For clothes that get hung, I like to separate them by category and then sort by color (just like in my master closet). My daughter is a big fan of color blocking her clothes too. She agrees that it’s so much easier to find that special blue shirt in a pinch. Of course, by now you all know about my obsession with slimline hangers…they did make the Top 10 list of organizing products after all! Uniform hangers make for an oh-so-gorgeous closet, AND they really cut down on that “hanger tangle” (a once common problem in my kiddos’ closets).
Need a few products to complete your closet organization project? Shop from my curated list of favorite closet organizing & storage products.
MAINTAIN
The frequency of your kids’ closet maintenance sessions will depend on your child’s age and growth rate. At a minimum, you’ll want to have spring and fall “fashion shows” to weed out the clothing that your child has grown out of, and to incorporate the items in the Too Big bin into the closet once your child has grown into those items. In our house, we have “fashion shows” at the beginning of each season. Depending on the size of your child’s closet, you may also need to swap out spring/summer and fall/winter clothing.
Your assignment for this week:
- Empty the closet(s) & clean them
- Sort items into Keep, Relocate, Trash, Donate, Repair, Hand-Me-Down & Too Big piles
- Designate a place (other than the closet) to store items that are too big
- Explore options for maximizing storage & containing item families
- Put items in your KEEP pile back into the space using basic organizing principles
- Schedule quarterly appointments in your calendar for “fashion shows” & closet maintenance
After you’ve completed this week’s assignment, share a photo of your kids’ closet(s) on Instagram (use the hashtag #OrganizeandRefineChallenge and don’t forget to tag me).
Happy Organizing!
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This post is part of the Organize and Refine Your Home Challenge
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Sabrina Quairoli says
Great tips on kids closet. I recently did this with my daughter She has a few smaller closets so we have to be quite creative with her clothing. Our best storage item is her IKEA cabinet that stores everything except a few pieces of clothing that get hung in the closet. It always surprises me how much they can get rid of when you ask the question, do you love it on you? Thanks for sharing your tips.
Natalie Gallagher says
Sabrina, Yes, that is the magic question. Also for my daughter, another crucial question is “is it comfortable?” If not, I know she’ll never wear it. Thanks for stopping by!
Sheri says
Thanks for the great organizing advice. I can use this! Thanks for linking up at Funtastic Friday!
Natalie Gallagher says
So glad you found it useful Sheri!
Leslie says
Oh, wow! I wish I’d had this checklist before going through my girls’ closet on Friday. That was a tough session. With both girls in one room, we ended up going through everybody’s clothes all at once. I will say that we do store the clothes that don’t fit our youngest on the upper shelf of their closet. But I was able to find tubs that fit that space perfectly. Without them, it would be a mess.
Natalie Gallagher says
That’s awesome Leslie! I totally agree that storing the “future” clothing out of the main clothing storage area is crucial. Thanks for stopping by the blog!
Sherry Nappa says
You did a fabulous job of organizing this closet! I can’t bear to part with the “small” stuff. I never feel like I get my money’s worth, but then the stuff just crowds the closet. Thanks so much for sharing at Funtastic Friday.
Natalie Gallagher says
Thanks for the kind words Sherry,AND for featuring the post! What you describe is a common decluttering challenge. Once you work past that thought of “but I paid good money for this” and give yourself permission to part with the “small stuff”, you’ll be amazed how good it feels to let go!