Recently, I’ve been craving a project. With Lola starting her senior year of high school, I feel like maybe this craving is just a distraction (but, still a craving nonetheless!) There’s something about losing myself in organizing a closet or cleaning out a drawer that is therapeutic. However, my kids don’t always share my same love for organization.
There are some minds that thrive in a little bit of chaos. Others who need everything to be clean and tidy before they can focus. And then, another group of people who are both! I can be very clean around the house, but when it comes to my car? Forget it. (I am embarrassed to say some of the things I’ve found there.) How can I get motivated to organize that space too?
Keep It Simple & Edit
This week, we bring our favorite organizational friends, Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin of The Home Edit, on our podcast. Clea and Joanna have two new books out now. They have a children’s book and a teen book both about organization, so we thought we would get a few tips! One big pitfall that most parents fall into is making their organization process too complicated. You have to keep it simple in order for others to follow it.
Kids learn organization in preschool and then as life goes on, they start to lose it. Organization is really just a giant game of patterns, sorting, even memory! The biggest thing you can do to start getting your teen or kid more organized is editing their space so they are invested in all the items they have. If they have a lot of junk they aren’t invested in, it’s harder to keep a space tidy.
Touch Access vs Storage Access
It’s important that everything has a routine and home. You should have an end-of-the-day routine where your school or work items live. Thinking about your spaces in touch access versus storage access is also useful. What things do you need in that immediate space and use consistently? Those are things that should be visible or easy to access. Alternatively, what things should you have, but you don’t need access to all the time?
Clea and Joanna give us more tips about keeping spaces clean, and we entertain them with the Top 5 things Penn has found in his car. (Buckle up, this one gets weird!) You can learn more about their books here and listen to the show below! What spaces do you need help organizing? Let us know in the comments.
