Organizing Kids: Pick Your Battles

August 25th, 2011 Kids Organizing

Organized Backpacks

How do you maintain home organization with kids and maintain your sanity too? Sometimes you just have to pick your battles. Sure, I am all about teaching kids organizing skills that will take them into adulthood. But I’m also a mom who believes in trying to avoid making myself crazy. So I think it’s important to really think about what is a ‘must’ in your home and what can slide.

I really learned that I needed to take it down 2-3 notches when my oldest child was about 4 years old. I know this story is going to sound over the top…but it was practically giving me anxiety at the time: She had a dollhouse that had specific people and accessories meant for the dollhouse. Well, she is creative and she was mixing and matching furniture, food, toys, etc. from other toys and using them in her dollhouse. Well, at the time, I was getting so stressed out because I wanted her to use the ‘right’ toys in the house. WHAT?!! How crazy is that? I had to stop and figure out why this was important to me. Well, it was because I had it in my head that if we ever sold her toys at a garage sale I wanted to have the right sets together. Thankfully I realized how silly this was and that she should be able to be creative. And who really cares-we could just donate the whole lot and it wouldn’t matter if the sets were still together. See-that was some over the top thinking!

What will be a must vs. what can slide at your house?

Perhaps bringing the dishes to the sink after dinner is a must, after all, you did do all the work to make dinner. But maybe backpacks on the floor by the door instead of on hooks can slide.

Maybe keeping a clear path in the bedroom between the bed and the door for safety is a must. But leaving an unmade bed isn’t going to make your home come crashing down.

Possibly taking shoes off to maintain a ‘shoe free’ home is a must to protect your carpets. But maybe you can live with kids kicking shoes into a basket instead of neatly lined up on a shoe rack. Kids aren’t going to line them up so you might as well live with a basket of shoes.

So, make sure you find that balance between staying organized and staying sane and it will be all good!