How to Organize a Child’s Bedroom

There is no shortcut on how to organize a child’s bedroom! The reality is, once you’ve committed to creating an organized bedroom for your kids you are in for a few days (or more) of intense sorting, purging, decision-making, storage assessment, shopping, and finally installing.

It’s an exhausting process and sometime in the middle of it you will probably be ready to wave the white flag and surrender. After a few room makeovers with each of my three kids, I can guarantee that if you stick with it the benefits will be well worth your efforts: better opportunities for your kids to practice self-regulation, an inviting space for your kids to enjoy playing, and a room that you can walk into and not feel overwhelmed by.

In the long term, a well-planned and organized bedroom will help your kids gain independence and a sense of responsibility for maintaining order while maximizing room to play!

But even the most organized of rooms will need a once-or-twice per year tune up. Eventually all rooms that have children in them inadvertently become a catch-all for the things they bring home from school, birthday parties, and community events. By regularly doing a sort-through of these collections you can avoid a much bigger job in the future. 

Here are the steps I take to organize my kid’s rooms:

Plan for Storage:

Before I start any reorganization project, I make sure we have all the right baskets and bins to fit the existing space in order to maximize room to play. Now that my kids are out of the baby years and have previously well organized spaces, they don’t need new bins, but what is in them needs to be purged when they start to overflow.

Sort and Purge All Items:

My kids rapidly outgrow a lot of their toys and books. I save anything that can be passed on to a younger sibling, cousin or friend. Broken and unidentifiable pieces are discarded and her overflowing “junk drawer” gets an overdue sort and clean.

Remember That Less is More:

By removing any overflow of toys, I’m helping support a relaxing environment for my daughter to come home to. We don’t actually do toy rotations anymore, but many families find this to be an easy way to keep that “new toy” feel.

Plan for Easy Access:

My daughter enjoys playing with a lot of her toys at once which means her doll house and accessories are kept in low, easily accessed, labelled bins.

Label, Label Label!

Define the Play Space:

Labels not only help her keep her things tidy, it also helps her friends and siblings know where to put things away when it is time to clean up. Here is a link to Mabel’s Labels, my favourite labels!

By clearing the area rug of any random toys, she can enjoy a defined play space and less stressful clean up (which is a valuable Montessori principle of providing freedom within limits) Here is a link to a “>play rug my kids enjoy!

Making Room to Play!

For our family, our kids are happier and easier to get along with when they’ve had a little quiet time to play by themselves. Organizing your child’s bedroom to maximize these opportunities gives you some precious quiet time, and allows your kids some time to work through the stress of their day.

Want more ideas? I’ve got plenty of curated ideas for calm and playful bedrooms over on Pinterest! Follow me there to stay up to date: