Easy must-have Kids Closet Organization Tips

Do your kids’ closets look like a train wreck? Do you want your kids to keep their closets clean on their own? Here are a few of my very best easy kids closet organization ideas.

Keeping our kid’s rooms clean can be quite a challenge sometimes. My kids love to create and draw and make new crafts – which I love! But all of the papers and ‘treasures’ can build up and be overwhelming. That’s why I am a firm believer in not just organizing your kid’s rooms for them and expecting it to stay clean by magic. Because we all know that isn’t going to happen.

It’s important to teach our kids to do it themselves. Kids closet organization, or lack thereof, can be a huge part of the problem. Here I’ll teach you a few tricks I have learned to help kids tame the clutter in their own room.

Kids Closet Organization

Clear out the clutter so that everything else that remains can have a clear ‘home’ to go to. If your kids know where things go, it is much easier for them to put it away instead of shoving it in a corner or under the bed (which totally happens at my house).

What I want you to realize is that these tips won’t make everything perfect, but they will be a step in the right direction. This is an important tip that I want you to keep in mind:

It doesn’t matter how organized you are, if you have too much stuff, it will always look cluttered.

So be brutally honest with yourself when going through closets and drawers. Only keep what currently fits or what you currently use! Be sure to guide your kids through this process and ask them questions to see if they are things that really need to be kept.

If you have a kid who hangs on to everything… maybe it is better to do the initial clean out when they are at school. Keep things they might consider important and hide them somewhere. Then if they haven’t mentioned it after a month, get rid of it!

Take Pictures of Art and Drawings

My daughter, who loves to keep everything, had SO many crafts and cards that she just wants to keep forever. I made a compromise with her: if I could take a picture of all of her drawings and put them into the family scrapbook, she would be willing to get rid of them. She agreed and we did it! And we were both happy about it!

Because she is a crafter at heart like her Mom, there will be more….much more! So I needed to create a spot for her to keep those things so they were no longer shoved under her bed – until the next batch of photos needed to be taken.

Storage Solutions to Create a System

I went to Ikea and bought some of the incredible Kuggis boxes with the lids and put some gold vinyl lettering in the words “Treasures” so she knows exactly where to put those types of things. Do they still accrue? Yes. Do they still pile up? Yes. But now it’s in a nice storage box instead of shoved under her bed in a giant pile.

I also bought her a few more bins to keep things in that she uses pretty often but it still looks beautiful in her closet. My daughter is a dancer and has a bunch of medals that she receives at competitions. We didn’t want to get rid of them but she also didn’t want them hanging around her room. So we created a ‘home’ for them and now she as a bin specifically for her dance medals.

Making Clothes Look Organized

My #1 tip for all of my clients (and anyone else!) is to buy hangers that are all the same. Every. Last. One. You wouldn’t believe the impact that this makes on the organizational feel of a closet. Trust me, hangers are cheap and they give you a big bang for your buck. Some people like plain ole’ plastic hangers so they can easily slide their shirts off the hanger but I prefer velvet hangers for my own closet. But the choice is up to you and it doesn’t matter which type you choose. Either way, it makes a huge impact on your closet.

My second tip is to organize your clothes according to type (long sleeve, short sleeve, tank tops, etc.). Then organize them according to color. It will be SO easy to find all of your favorite tops if they are organized this way.

It’s a lot harder to keep my kids’ closets organized by color because they put their own laundry away. So most of the time, I just do this to my own closet.

Keeping Shoes off the Floor

I like to keep my kid’s shoes organized in these over the door organizers. They are nothing new and most people probably already utilize them, but I love how they keep the shoes from gathering at the bottom of her closet in a heap.

If kids don’t have a place to put them away, they usually just throw them on the floor. Creating a ‘home’ for them gets rid of any excuses for them to be lazy.

Teaching kids to keep their closets clean and organized is not for the faint of heart. It takes lots and lots of practice. But try some of these tips and it will move you in the right direction.

Help them Evaluate How they Feel

Ask your child how they feel inside after the project is done. Is it easier to find things? Does it make you happy? Is it more peaceful? Help them recognize the contrast in feelings and then they may be able to be more motivated to keep it cleaner longer.

If you are looking for more tips on closet organization, check out these other posts: