I could use strategies for how to get an overwhelmingly disorganized house under control with two small kids.

I often comment that when I got into one room and get some things organized, I come out to find they’ve trashed a different room. I have fantasies of ordering a dumpster, parking it in the driveway, and just tossing everything but the furniture out the window to be carted away by my friendly garbage man.

Shannon from Ohio, USA.

Shannon, believe it or not, before I got organised, I used to feel the same way. Especially about my wardrobe. I’d hope that we’d get burgled so it would all go and I could just start afresh.

I still feel like that in small areas of my life – like before I did a major wardrobe declutter last year and when I see all the babies’ clothes!

But here are my suggestions for you and the kids:

Have a toy basket in each room
Even if there are things that technically don’t belong, they’ll be contained.

Enlist the children
They made the mess, they can tidy up. Start getting tough with them and make sure they understand that when we’re done playing, we tidy up.

Even though my babies are so small, I already make them tidy up. Joking! But I do drape one baby over my one arm and tidy up with the other hand. While I’m doing this I tell them, “now we’re putting your toys away and we’re taking the glasses back to the kitchen” because the minute they can start doing it themselves, they’re going to do so (children as young as 1 can throw toys into a basket).

Have consequences for not tidying up
They “lose” the toys for a certain period of time if you find them where they don’t belong.

As for the whole house being disorganised, start with a master plan by using a master to-do list or a mind map.

With the Organise your Home ecourse, we do just that – tackle one room at a time until your whole home is organised and we set up routines so that you won’t have to ever completely organise everything.

Usually people see big results even after week 1.

Just one of your ideas has been worth the price of the e-course alone! Everyone in the family is so excited by it.

Thank you so much – this has really been money well spent, and I really look forward to the rest of your emails every week!

Fran Kerrigan Hartford, WI

How do you keep your house organised if you have small children?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am and is filed under organise your home, organising children's toys, organising for children. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.