Easy Tips to Organize A Kid’s Bedroom & Closet

My kids aren’t little anymore, but they still need my help to organize their bedrooms, especially their closets! My youngest son was home from college for the summer and we did a complete makeover on his room. Now it’s time to organize his entire bedroom. When we moved into the house he stuffed boxes and tubs full of his treasures inside his closet. We’ll go through all of his things and get them organized in his newly updated bedroom! Keep reading to get my easy tips to organize a kid’s bedroom and closet!

 Use the 6/P Strategy

I developed a simple six-step strategy to use when organizing any space. As we go through each step, I’ll show you how we used the strategy to organize a drawer in Harrison’s nightstand. Then we’ll use the same strategy to tackle his closet, toys he wants to keep, and collections he wants to display.

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Here is a drawer in Harrison’s nightstand before he organized it! Wow! It’s a complete mess! So, let’s get the 6/P strategy started by doing each of the following steps:

PREP

Locate the following items:

A trash bag, a box, and 2 laundry hampers.

PURGE

Remove all items from the area you are organizing and place each in one of the following categories:

Trash-Throw any unwanted items in the trash bag

Donate-place any items that you no longer use but are in great shape in the box to be donated

Relocate-Place any items that don’t belong in the space in laundry hamper # 1

Replace-Place any items that need to stay in this space in laundry hamper #2

POLISH

Clean the space! I love to use my vacuum to get the dust out of drawers!

PERSONALIZE

It’s time to decide how you will organize the space based on your personal needs.  I have provided a printable to help you figure this out. If you’d like the free printable, just sign up for our weekly email here.

1. Decide what needs to be in the space and group like items together.
2. If necessary, decide how you will contain items in the space.  Will you make or purchase containers?

PLACE

Now it’s time to place your items back in the space.

Trash-discard in your garbage can.

Donate-Don’t procrastinate, take items in your box to your local donation center right away!

Relocate-take #1 laundry hamper and deliver the items to the room they actually belong in.

Replace-take the #2 laundry hamper and place each item in the spot you found for it.

PUT BACK

It’s very important to teach your kid how to put items back in their appropriate place after they use them. This is a great habit to learn at an early age! If they don’t put things back where they belong, you will end up with a cluttered mess again!

What do you think of my 6/P Strategy? As I said, it works for any space in your home. Now let’s move on because I have more easy tips to help you organize your kid’s bedroom and closet.

I wanted to share one more thing about Harrison’s nightstand before we move on to his closet. It has a USB port on the back. Isn’t that awesome! It’s just like a hotel room lol! So convenient for charging your phone.

Tips for organizing a clothes closet

Use the 6/P Strategy to organize the closet. Ready to see the before picture of his closet?

It’s messy, messy, messy! Not for long, we can do better than that!

Here are my tips on how to arrange items inside of the closet!

Separate clothes by type

Determine what clothes will be stored in the closet and what items can be stored elsewhere, like dressers, chest of drawers, etc.

Here are typical clothes categories:

•  shirts – long-sleeve and short-sleeve
•  pants – long and shorts
•  skirts
•  dresses
• underclothes
• pajamas/robes
• seasonal clothing: swimsuits, coats/jackets, hats/gloves

I like to make separate areas for different types of clothes. It makes it easier for kids to find what they need. They’ll know exactly where to hang their clothes when they’re putting the laundry away!

Harrison’s shorts are on the left side of his closet.

His shirts are on the right side of his closet. Notice the short-sleeved ones are easily accessible since we live in Florida. Next comes the long-sleeved shirts and then his sweatshirts.

store underclothes in drawers

Harrison chose to have a desk and bookshelves, instead of a dresser, in his room. So, we put this inexpensive set of drawers in his closet. It holds his underwear, socks, pajamas, and swimsuits.

organize shoes

Purchase a shoe organizer. The kind you buy will depend on the type of closet doors you have. If doors swing open, purchase one that hangs on the back of the door. If your closet doors slide open, as Harrison’s does, purchase one that hangs from the rod.

We put his shoe organizer in the middle of the closet to divide the two spaces!

Use hangers with clips to store hats and belts

I love these cascading hangers with clips! They work great for vertical storage. You can hang baseball hats by clipping the bill to the hanger. Belts can hang from the hooks in the center of the hanger.

Use storage cubes on the shelf

These storage cubes from Walmart fit perfectly on the top shelf of Harrison’s closet! I love storing things in these cubes because it keeps the closet looking tidy and organized.

store a laundry hamper in the closet

If you have room, I suggest storing a laundry hamper inside the closet. It’s the best place to keep all those stinky, dirty, clothes until laundry day. If you don’t have room in the closet, put it someplace else in the room. Otherwise, you’ll have piles of dirty clothes on the floor!

Tips for organizing toys

use space under the bed

Harrison is in college, but he has a few toys he does not want to part with. Luckily, the beds in his room have large storage drawers beneath them. The drawers are on wheels and can be pulled out from underneath the beds. This is a fabulous place to store toys in a bedroom.

These drawers are huge. So, to keep the toys organized, and separated I chose to use extra-small Home Depot moving boxes inside the drawer. They were a bit too tall, so I removed an inch off the top of each box.

Perfect for his collection of Transformers!

Tips for displaying collections

Do your kids love to collect stuff? All three of my boys do!! From Pokemon cards to Disney pins and lots of things in between. Let me show you how we decided to show off some of Harrison’s treasures!

Display items on a corkboard

Several years ago, I bought each of the boys an organizer made specifically for their Disney pins. Harrison decided he wanted to be able to see his pins, so we bought a framed corkboard for his room. Did you notice he arranged the pins, in the center of the board, in the shape of a Hidden Mickey?

add book shelves to display items

Harrison is displaying some of his favorite items on his bookshelves. Here are some items that have sentimental value to him!

His Eagle Scout awards and Star Wars Funco Pops.

High School diploma and Star Wars Tsum Tsums.

Favorite dinosaur books and collectible dinosaurs.

I hope my easy tips will help you organize a kid’s bedroom and closet at your house! If you’d like to see how we made over his bedroom into a rustic retreat, click here.

Blessings, Donna and Rich