Self Help

The places you have created to put things can carry an automatic limit. A dishpan or box for school papers is a limit. When the box is full, the child goes through the papers, keeping only the favorites. After storing things for a while, some of the initial emotional attachment is gone and it is easier for the child to discard them. A bulletin board and knickknack shelf are limiting. When they are full, some of the papers or hobby items need to be stored.

Another important limit to consider is clothing. How often do you wash? Every other day? Once a week? Count the number of days between washings, add a couple, and that could be the limit on how many clothes are out. So often we keep two or three times that many clothes in the closet or chest and it complicates efforts to keep the room clean. Involve your child in learning to manage a few things well.

Limits also need to be set for toys. Think about a rotation system, leaving some of the toys out on the toy shelves for a week or two and then rotating them with different ones that have been stored elsewhere. Young children find old toys carry the freshness of new toys after they have been out of sight for a time. With fewer children per family, toys that last longer, cuter things available, and with prosperous grandparents, the number of toys per child has increased.

Kids have more toys, and parents live in smaller quarters. Add those two together and without management you have a mess. After a hard planning session, stand back and evaluate where toys are used. Sometimes it is better to rearrange and store toys in the places where the children use them. If you find yourself picking up a mountain every day, your children may be playing a game called “dump everything” instead of playing with them as they were designed. It is time to cut back the available inventory and rotate.

Add something new from time to time to spark interest. Give a new set of bed sheets or a bucket of paint for a birthday present. Just changing the furniture around when cleaning gives a feeling of newness and motivates the child to keep it clean for a few days. The child’s bedroom doesn’t have to have everything new or look like a magazine picture, but a change gives a boost to the child.