Organized Children’s Closets: How To and Betsy’s Before & After Pics

Last week we worked on cleaning out the coat closet. A lot of the same principles apply when cleaning out your children’s closets. I would highly suggest to not attempt this with your child if at all possible. It can make the task quite daunting!Also, see my before, middle and after pictures on the right to give you an idea of how I organized my children’s closet!

The first step is to empty out the contents of the closet. While emptying place each item into the four categories

• Keep
• Sell
• Donate/Give Away
• Throw out

What to Keep?
This is pretty simple for children’s closets:

1. Does it fit or will it fit soon?
2. Will he/she wear it?

What to Sell?
Prior to trying to sell your item(s), it is best to research what is the current market price. I sell all my items on ebay. According to “Hoovers”, a D&B Company, ebay now has more than 135 million registered users. I am an ebay consignor so I do this product market research service free for my clients. Once you have an amount of what similar items have sold for in the recent past, you need to decide if you want to sell it or donate it. One thing to keep in mind when selling your item(s) on ebay is that there are no guaranties your item will sell at the price you would like it to, or that it will sell at all.

What to Donate/Give Away?
Because I have been very blessed by hand-me-downs for my children, I try to pass things right along when at all possible. Make sure that your good deed is not cluttering up someone else’s closet. Ask if your items would are needed first. If you plan on donating your items to a non-profit charity make sure you keep a good record of what was donated and have the charitable organization sign your receipt. (See the charitable donation spreadsheet.) When you donate to a non-profit organization that is accepted by the federal government as such, you can claim each item for its fair market value. A good rule of thumb to use when trying to come up with a fair market value would be 25% of the retail price.

What to throw away?

Throw away overly used and damaged shoes and clothing.

Now that your child(ren)’s closet is completely empty it is time to give it a good cleaning top to bottom. Before you start loading the closet back with only the items you have in your “Keep” pile, it’s time to evaluate what areas of the closet were the most cluttered. If it was the shoes that your child tossed in there, place a shoe shelf in the bottom. Perhaps it was the shelf above the clothes that was overwhelmed with stuff. Measure the area and place bins or baskets. Before you run right out to your nearest “mart” store to get bins and baskets make sure that you don’t already have something in your home that would work just fine.

There are many different household chores that I think are amazing to share with your young children, getting rid of clutter is not always a good one! Children are often attached to items and will be horrified to see us packing up their way too small “Dora the Explorer” outfit or other once very special item. This said, I think it is great to have your child(ren) help you once the de-cluttering is finished and it is time to place the “Keep” items back into the closet.