A Room-By-Room Guide to Organizing Your Home

Quick, without looking, tell us the color of your living room carpet. You’re stalling. Go ahead, take a guess. Give up?       

Like most busy parents, you probably haven’t had an unobstructed view of the floors in your home since the Reagan administration. Covered in toys, pop-up books, ground up granola bars and the occasional stray sock, your floors (along with the rest of your home) are a veritable minefield of chaos and clutter.    


Fortunately, bringing order to your muddled household needn’t be a Herculean task—but it does require a little planning, discipline and ingenuity. Use these room-by-room tips to transform your home from messy to marvelous. Happy cleaning—and get back to us on that color-of-your-floor question when you're done.






Playroom


10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">• Prevent toy dumping by securing plastic storage bins to low-hanging shelves.


10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">• Establish a guideline: Put one toy away before taking out another one.


10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">• Make cleanup fun. Pick a special cleanup song or make one up—the sillier the better. Also, cut the top off a milk carton and let kids use that as a scoop to pick up small toys.


10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">• If you’ve got too many toys, consider talking to potential giftgivers about choosing an intangible gift – movie tickets instead of another set of Legos, for example.


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