organization in the girls' room

There is a constant battle with the girls when it comes to them cleaning their room.  Or, I should say, the lack of them cleaning their room. 

I know, I know!  They are only 4 and 5!  And, I had a crazy, messy room when I was younger.  My mom will tell you that.  But, I can see in their room from the living room.  Heck, I can stand in the kitchen and look into their room.

There have been many benefits to having an open floor plan while the girls are young.  But, I can't stand to see a mess!  And, the girls are pros as making a mess.  I tell them over and over that if they are going to play with something, that is fine.  Just put it up when they are finished. 

Back when we painted and re-arranged their room, I bought a storage unit that I thought would help with the cleaning up process.  It did somewhat, but I think the problem was there were too many places to put things, and everything got mixed up and then they never knew where anything was.

I think I fixed it all on Saturday.  We are having major success with the girls putting things back where they go since I went through all their toys, got rid of stuff, threw away stuff, and organized the rest in bins with labels.  Now, they have a visual of where things are supposed to go.

First, I re-arranged their room, again!  I just can't help myself.  Plus, the girls LOVE it when I re-arrange stuff.  It must seem like a whole new room to them.  Since it has been hot, we put the couch cushion on the floor in our room and they sleep there since our room is the coolest in the house.  Sunday morning, the morning after I did their room, Jorge gets up and doesn't see Bella.  She, her pillow, and blanket were gone.  He found her sleeping in her room.  She told him that she liked the room so much that she wanted to sleep in it.  Even though it was hot in there.

So, here is what their room looks like now.  I know it is hard to tell with just photos, but things are moved around.  The only thing that stayed in the same place is Bella's pink dresser.

Before I go into what I did, I want to point out that one way I try to help maintain a cleaner room for the girls is by not having certain types of toys in their room.  We have the area by the green table that we call our "classroom".  That is where we keep all the toys that have parts and pieces.  This helps TONS with keeping all the parts together.  Things that go into their room are pretty much considered lost.  Games, Mr.Potato Head, puzzles, blocks, dominoes, Legos...  All the stuff pictured below the girls know have to stay in our "classroom".

We keep them all on this shelf. 

I took out that storage unit that held all the little colored bins.  I placed the bins around the room and put a picture label with the word so they can see what goes in the bin and where the bin goes.  The door on the sink wouldn't stay closed, so I took it off.  Here you can see I put two of the bins inside.

Here is a close-up of the bin with the photo and word of what goes in the bin.  You can see the out-of-focus label that is on the shelf.  That way they know where that bin goes.

The below picture shows you the matching label on the shelf.

Inside Bella's dresser are shelves.  I put the dress-up clothes in the bins and labeled them for each girl.  It would be easier if I just had a room for each one of them. But, I don't.  So, we try to keep their things separate.  It helps cut down on how many fights there are per day.

This shelf I kept all the toys that get played with together.  They have all the dollhouses on the top.  In each of the containers on the shelves, there are: people, horses (My Little Ponies), animals, and furniture.  Since they play with all of them in the dollhouses, it just made sense to keep them all close to each other.

I did the same with the labels here.  I put one on the container and I put it's matching label on the shelf.

They seem to be more willing to put things away.  I think they think it is neat that the pictures are everywhere.  It might seem like a game to them.  I just hope they keep it up!