Do long summer days have you running out of ideas for how to entertain your children? Do your kids ever complain about being bored? Maybe the answer is to put them to work, because believe it or not, kids can organize!
When it comes to getting organized, children may seem like more of a liability than an asset. While kids can certainly be “contributors to the chaos,” they can also be helpful in establishing order. Of course, very young children have limited attention spans and skills, but it is all about matching the task to the child. It also helps to be very specific, with small, discrete little projects. For instance, rather than telling kids to “clean up their room,” try making a game of “let’s gather all the shoes in the house and find a place for them to live. You might also want to put on a fun song or set a timer. Additionally, offering an incentive (e.g. an ice cream, a trip to the park, etc.) can make tasks appealing and fun.
Here is a list of ideas to consider for a rainy (or steamy!) day:
Organizing Jobs for Kids
- Test markers & pens and throw away bad ones
- Sort a crayon bin to find pieces too small to use and throw them away
- Sharpen pencils
- Sort loose change into piles by type
- Put sorted change into coin sleeves
- Feed pages into a shredder
- Sort through coupons and remove expired ones
- Try on clothes and pile up those that no longer fit
- Vacuum the car (search for hidden treasures!)
- Empty out a cabinet or drawer to a table for sorting
- Choose some books to donate from a shelf
- Choose some toys/stuffed animals to donate
- Sort through the artwork they made during the year to pick out favorites to keep
- Match lids with plastic food storage containers (and recycle any without a match)
- Search closets for extra hangers (recycle at the dry cleaner)
- Find and remove any out of date items on a bulletin board
- Search the garage for “flat” balls… either pump them up or pitch them
- Help carry items to the car/donation location
- Go on a “donation road trip” to drop items off to a charity
- Search through winter mittens for matches and pitch any solo mittens
- Help label items
- Pull weeds
- Harvest vegetables
Want to go even further? Why not set your kids off on a Decluttering Scavenger Hunt?
Do you think kids can organize? Do you have ideas to add to this list?
