Teaching Kids How to Organize

Organization is an important life skill that we need to develop and cultivate in our children. By teaching kids to be organized, parents can help children to be more independent, self confident and responsible both at home and at school. At home, an organized child who takes responsibility for keeping up with his own belongings, cleaning up after himself and helping with family chores makes for a much less chaotic home life. And good organizational skills will establish the framework your child needs to achieve success in school and beyond.

Helping Your Child Develop Organizational Skills

The key is to start simple and gradually add more responsibility as your child grows. Here are some tips for working on organizational skills through the ages:

Toddler/Preschool: Start Young

• Establish routines. Child development experts stress that from an early age, our little people need to have structure in their lives, and they thrive on following a routine. Children feel safe and secure when they know what is going to happen and when. By age two or three, children are old enough to learn and follow their own routines. Make your child a chart using pictures and words to reinforce his daily schedule. He can begin to work through each task in sequence until the routine becomes habit. (Eat breakfast…brush teeth…put on clothes and shoes…).

• Set the example. Be consistent with the established routine. Designate a place to put everything and help your child return it to the same spot. Prepare ahead for the next day, setting out clothes, packing the day bag and gathering any other needed items. Through modeling, your child will learn from your example.

• Foster developmental skills. Little hands are developing skills now, like lining up, matching, stacking and sorting, that you can build upon to help them develop strong organizational skills. Provide your child with Legos, blocks and other small items of different colors, shapes and sizes they can use to practice these skills. Ask them to put their skills to work helping you with laundry, sorting whites from darks and matching socks, and sorting and putting away like toys together.

• Make it a cooperative effort. Little people actually enjoy being helpful. If you don’t make chores sound like a boring job or hard work, your kids will develop a positive attitude about making a contribution. Yes, your chores may take longer with them “helping,” but in the long run, you’ll reap the rewards. Give your child age-appropriate tasks. Like when you do laundry, let them help you match sock pairs and carry them to the correct bedroom. Or when you’re straightening up the house, give them a bucket or pillowcase to collect and carry their belongings back to their room.

• Let them do the jobs they enjoy most. When she was a toddler, my oldest child (now age 10) loved to wipe off and dry the granite counter where we ate our lunch and snacks. The job kept her busy while I cleaned up the dishes, and she was quite proud of how the granite gleamed when she was done. My youngest loves to watch the washing machine agitate, so if she helps sort the laundry, I let her drop the clothes in the washing machine. In the kitchen, I involved them in prep work, washing fruits and vegetables, peeling carrots, grating cheese, using the Salad Spinner (a big hit in our house) and making sandwiches.  They both jump at the chance to help in the kitchen.  And have you ever known a child who doesn’t love to go outside and play in the water?  My husband can always count on help from the girls to wash the car or water the plants.

• Make it fun.  Have you ever made sock puppets?  In my spin-off from the old sock puppet idea, we repurposed a pair of clean, old sweat socks by drawing monster faces on the feet and christening them the “Dust Monsters.” While I dusted the higher reaches, shelves and breakables, my daughter would put the Dust Monsters on her hands and “eat the dust” off of everything in her zone and down low.  She still loves to use the Dust Monsters at age 5, and I haven’t dusted a baseboard since.

• Organize their toys. Set up kid-friendly, toy storage to make it easy for your child to keep track of his toys and put them away. Use clear plastic storage boxes, bins or crates on open storage shelving so toys can be accessed at his level; smaller containers are easier for little hands to manage. Sort like toys together and label each container with a picture so your child knows what is stored in that container. Show him where everything is stored and how easy it is to find and put away his own toys. You can supervise the process until he gets the hang of it, but resist putting the toys away for him. It will take longer to get the job done, but he will catch on faster if you step back into the supporting role. Be patient and give lots of praise as he puts things away.

• Set rules of play. Set limits on how many toy bins your child can have out at one time. Explain the rules and let him know if he wants to get out another toy, he’ll have to put something else away first. Setting limits will keep clean up a manageable process for your child. At the end of a play session, if it looks like a bomb went off in the room, it’s overwhelming to the child (as well as the parent).

In the next developmental phases, we can build upon these skills and gradually help our children to step into more independent roles. Check my next posts for working on organizational skills with kids from ages 5 - 8 and ages 9 - 12. 

For more on organizing the household, kids and back-to-school, see Organize Your Household for Back-to-School: Communications Central, Back-to-School: Organizing the Entry or Hall, Back-to-School: Setting Up a Homework Area, Back-to-School: Creating a Kid’s Reading Corner, and Teaching Kids Time Management.

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