Are your kids going stir-crazy stuck at home all day during this COVID-19 pandemic? Families around the world have had to go through the difficult process of adjusting to all school and extracurricular projects now being done at home. And if your kids’ rooms are a mess, it can make the transition even harder.

Luckily – even if your kids have always had messy rooms, there is hope. In fact, now may be the perfect time to help your kids finally get their rooms cleaned and organized.

We love helping families find storage solutions and home organization strategies that work here at Modular Closets. This includes helping kids build good habits early in life.

Here are 5 tips you can use to inspire and empower your kids to finally get their rooms clean and organized for the long term:

1. Set a Good Example

Do you expect your kids to be clean and organized while simultaneously letting your own clutter accumulate around the house?

“Do as I say, not as I do” may be a favorite parental expression, but the truth is children do learn more than we may realize from the examples we set as adults.

If you’ve been guilty of a disorganized lifestyle yourself, use this time to set a new standard – and a new example – throughout your household. By talking openly about your own challenges in keeping organized, you can bring your kids into to process of developing new solutions for home organization.

2. Start with Small Goals

If cleaning their rooms has been a perennial problem for your kids, one of the best ways to build better habits is to start with small goals.

Instead of asking your kids to clean their rooms from top to bottom, start instead with a more bite-size project.

For example, you could ask them to clean just one section of the room today, a task that may only take 15 minutes but give them a sense of a real “win” – which can serve as motivation to fuel future cleaning efforts.

3. Make Use of Vertical Space 

One great way to tackle clutter in your kids’ room is to make use of vertical space for storage.

Instead of letting their belongings pile up on the floor, you can use shelves or cubbies or stackable storage bins to create designated places to put all the things they want to keep in their rooms.

4. Give Them a Sense of Ownership

Instead of having “Clean up!” be a top-down demand issued from the authority of your parental position, invite your kids to have a say in the process and start to take ownership for organizing their own rooms.

For example, you could begin by having a conversation about why it’s good to be organized, asking them about their own experiences of times when maybe they couldn’t find a favorite toy or something needed for school due to a mess. Then, let them brainstorm possible solutions and agree together on a plan for execution.

5. Put a System in Place

Sometimes rooms become cluttered because there isn’t a storage system in place to handle all the belongings.

In such a situation, it can be useful to get advice from organization experts on how a customized closet system or home organization solution could make good use of the space available to create a designated spot for each item.

If you might be interested in exploring an organization solution for your kid’s room, our team here at modular Closets will be happy to help – and we’ll even offer you a FREE closet design.