Four steps to zoning a child’s bedroom

Zoning your child’s bedroom can increase the fun while decreasing the clutter. Sounds great, right? After all, who wants to fight clutter all the time?

Here’s a battle plan for creating activity zones:

1) List out the activities your child does in the room. These likely include sleeping, dressing, reading and playing. Then break down the play activities into types – dress-up, art, music, building, toy-based. These will help dictate the types of zones you’ll have in the room.

(Warning – don’t go overboard with the zoning. A child’s room is only so big and you’re trying to help them be organized, not overwhelm them. You might want to stick with four or five major zones and move some activities to other areas of the house.)

2) Watch where they do those activities. Do they prefer to play dress up along with tea? Do they like to read by the window? Do they take their cars all over the house? This will help you decide what zone should go where in a way that your child will understand (and use!).

3) Figure out how you’re going to divide the room up. You want to make clear for the child where the boundaries are. Ideas for this could be divider screens, furniture groupings, fabric panels, color schemes or area rugs. If you’re replacing the flooring, you might consider sectioning the rug into different colors even.

4) Get everything in its zone. That means bedtime books and toys should be over near the bed. Art supplies in storage in the art zone. Dress-up clothes in their section, every day clothes in theirs. Rather than keeping all toys in the room together, put them in the places where your child will play with them.

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Tags: organization