Creating an Organized Playroom
Many of the Key Land homes in Savage MN include room for creating dedicated playrooms or play areas for your children. This gives them the room to learn and play without all of their toys necessarily migrating to other rooms in the house. Yet even with a dedicated playroom, controlling the clutter and mess presents a challenge. Fortunately, there are ways to organize a playroom to make it fun for the kids and safe for parents to walk.
You may want to start by organizing all of the toys into a handful of categories: arts and crafts, books, games and puzzles, dolls and accessories, cars and trains, costumes, and miscellaneous. You can have your kids help you sort everything into the appropriate piles or you can do it on your own to prevent potential tantrums as you continue to organize.
As you create the piles, now is the time to toss anything that is broken, missing pieces, or never used. Take a look at the books and pull out any that your children have moved beyond, such as simple alphabet books. You can save them or donate them.
Ideally, toys should encourage your children to be creative and use their imagination or learn. The toy shouldn’t do all of the entertaining. Additionally, too many toys can cause indecision in children. As you look at the toys, you’ll recognize which ones your children always gravitate toward and which get ignored. At this point, you may want to consider storing some of the toys that they rarely use. If you have multiples of something in different colors or characters, leave behind the favorite color and character and store the others.
One option is to reduce the number of toys and then rotate toys periodically, pulling out some from storage and putting others into storage. Alternatively, you could reduce the toys down to the primary favorites and then only introduce other toys if the child specifically asks for it. Anything that isn’t asked for within a few months could then be donated.
Once you’ve pared down the amount of toys, try organizing the playroom into designated areas for the different toy types. Set up a table where children can do arts and crafts. Create a reading nook with a comfy chair and bookcases that make the books easy to see and reach. Set up a clothing rack and basket for costumes and make-believe. Have one area dedicated to games and puzzles, and another for dolls, cars, and similar items. Child-accessible shelving and bookcases where all of the toys can be put away each day keeps the toys visible, but still helps control the mess.
At the end of each day, have your children put away all of their toys in the appropriate place. Help the younger ones and supervise older children. You may also want to encourage them to put toys away before moving on to a new area of the playroom throughout the day. As they become used to this, they will develop the habit of putting things away, which will serve them well as they get older.
By organizing the playrooms in the homes in Savage MN, you may find that you have more time to play with your children and encourage their creativity and imagination, rather than feeling the need to clean up a mess. At the end of the day, everyone will be happier.
