 Some
kids, we know, are fabulously organized. My niece, for example. Every gift-giving
occasion for the past three years, I've given her a charm for her charm bracelet,
and every time, she runs upstairs and comes back with the original white cardboard
box she keeps tucked away on the right side of the bottom drawer of her dresser.
And then there's her brother, and my other niece, and countless other children
who are more absorbed in the process of growing up than they are in the details
of where to keep their belongings. Across the land, we can all hear the weekend
call of parents everywhere, from cramped New York apartments to capacious California
ranches: "Clean up your room!" But maybe there's something more
you can do to help your kid get organized than to join in the weekly battle cry.
Remember that the problem of disorganization, among kids as well as among
adults, is that we simply don't have enough time, and we don't use the time we
do have well. You might want to start seeing time as an investment, and
teach your kids to do the same. If you take one second now to hang up that shirt,
it will save you 15 minutes later when you have to locate it, iron it, and then
hang it up anyway. But there are also some concrete ways you can help your
kid get organized. This is the time to think systems. There are plenty
of good closet organizers out there, including custom closet designers who come
to your home, consult with you, take measurements, and then come back and magically
change that jumble of junk into neatly shelved things that you can actually find
and use. Then, on a more practical level, there are the cheaper models
that you buy for yourself at a housewares store.  To
use these, first sit down with your child - if you can find a place to sit in
his room - and talk about the stuff that makes up his life. He has his soccer
ball and uniform and cleats, his baseball card collection, his clothing, his miniature
Foosball game, and then the assorted little things that get scattered around:
hackey sacks and hockey pucks and baseballs and yesterday's peanut butter sandwich.
Oh yeah, and then there are the school books. Start by categorizing things:
Sports, Hobbies, Toys, Clothing, Food. Come up with the categories that make sense
for your kid, with his help. The more he feels that he's part of this process,
the greater the likelihood he'll keep up with the later organization. Next,
measure his closet, and take measurements of the rest of the room. Don't forget
to bring these with you to the housewares store, and bring your kid, too, no matter
how much he might protest. Get him involved, if you possibly can, in choosing
what kind of organizers he'll have. At the housewares store you'll find
an array of shelving units, bookcases, stackable drawers, and other things. Make
sure you compare the measurements carefully to those you've taken in the room,
and when you get home, you should be able to set up the system yourself.
 Many
of these systems are adjustable, so that if your kid gives up soccer and takes
up field hockey, the shelves can be moved around to accommodate a hockey stick
instead of a soccer ball. As you're organizing the kid's room, think of
how often certain things are used, and think too of the items that might need
to be rotated, just as you put away your summer things in the fall and your winter
things come spring. So too you can put the off-season sports equipment in the
back of the closet and the currently used stuff up front. It will help
to have a couple of drawers or boxes for the small items that can be so easily
scattered around the house: the baseballs and yo-yos and dog toy and precious
Coke bottle the significance of which still eludes you. Organizing your
kid's room doesn't have to mean changing his personality. You can, indeed, appreciate
who he is while helping him to organize things just a little more. This investment
of time will pay off later, when both you and your kid no longer have to waste
time arguing about room clean up, and instead can spend some time actually playing
with that mini Foosball game.
–Sarah Van
Arsdale
Copyright © 2002
Sheffield
School of Interior Design
211 East 43rd St. New York, NY 10017
(212)
661-7270 Fax: (212) 867-8122 | 
It's
finally June. The month where school ends and summer REALLY begins!