Ep 37 - Tween + Teen Room Organization

 

Welcome to The Tidy Revival Podcast! In this episode, we will be discussing tips for organizing a teenager's room. As a parent or guardian, it can be challenging to navigate the clutter in a teenager's space. That's why I'll be sharing my top tips for decluttering, putting things away, and creating homes that work for your teenager's needs. Join me as we explore ways to make your teenager's room a more organized and functional space.

You can listen right here, on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or you can read the transcription below. Enjoy!

 
 
 
 

Hello and welcome. 

Today I'm going to be talking about tips to help you get your teen's room organized. The reason that I wanted to talk about this is because it has been coming up with my clients. It's been coming up in my networking groups. 

The teen years 

We all know about the teen years. They're just a little bit more of a different beast. Teens are old enough that they really need to have more input in the decision-making than your younger kids would. A lot of people can get nervous about approaching this situation. They want to go into it kind of having a plan. Most of this is the way that I approach pretty much any room with organizing. A big thing is going to be about getting the buy-in from your teen on the systems and listening to what they have to say about how they would like things to go. A lot of times it can be a lot different from what you might envision. By listening to what works for them and not, and why. You're going to get a lot of insight by just asking questions and asking some open-ended questions, being ready to listen to the answer. I know that you know that that's the easiest way to connect with a teen. I will also say coming in as an organizer is definitely different than coming in as a parent because during these years, depending on your teen, they could be a little bit tough and they may not want to hear your input, so I totally get that.

Here are the tips that I would use. If you decide that having a third party is going to be helpful because of the special circumstances of the beautiful teen years, if you would like to connect with me for in-Home services, let me know. If you're in a different area and you just need to get help finding another organizer. Let me know too. I can help point you in the right direction. Just email me at Carly@tidyrevival.com, or you can DM me on Instagram. That's an easy way to get a hold of me too.

So without further ado, here are some teenager tips that I found are the top things to think about as you're organizing a teen's room.

Tip 1: Start with Decluttering

All right. First of all, we are going to use decluttering as the foundation of our organization project, and that is my top tip for any space. If you've ever heard me talk about organizing in general. You know that I use decluttering as a foundation of everything that we do. What this means is that we don't want to assume that anything is a keep until they say so, because it might surprise you the things someone is ready to say goodbye to.

Now, if your teen is ready to say good goodbye to something, but you are not ready to say goodbye to something, I'm going to cover that a little bit later. If getting your teen's room organized is your end goal, then when they say they're ready to let go of something, I want you to just nod and smile in agreement and try not to pressure them to keep something that you are not ready to let go of. If it's not serving them, the point is to get their room more organized, and the easiest way to do that is to remove the things that they no longer use, want, need, or love. If you are not ready to say goodbye, we're going to cover that in a little bit, but that's going to fall under sentimental items. So keep listening, we're going to talk about it.

Tip 2: Have 3 sorting containers ready for decluttering

When you're working in the room, when you're getting started, I want you to make sure that you have containers. They could be any sort of receptacle. I use lined trash bins, but if you don't happen to have three trash bins lying around. I completely understand. That's just what I use. They can be regular bins, they can be trash cans, they could be a bag, or they can be old boxes. we'll want receptacles for trash recycling and donations so that you can easily pack up and move them.

tip 3: Start with Trash

And again, for in-home sessions, I use three lined trash bins that are labeled, so I can easily bag things up when one is full, replace it with a new bag, and just kind of keep things moving quickly. If your teen's room doesn't have a permanent trash can, that is going to be like the immediate purchase that you're going to want to make because as you declutter, the easiest thing to do is to start with trash. Sometimes things just get tossed on the floor and removing those can be very, very helpful. I highly recommend just starting with the trash. 

Once you remove the trash there's somebody, I think this tip comes from domestic blisters, but I'm not positive, but I've heard people say they start with trash. Then next they move on to dishes. Those can absolutely pile up in a teen's room. So take all those dishes that are dirty and move them over to the kitchen. Then laundry, just picking up that dirty laundry and putting it into the hamper. Yeah, so putting things away, that'll be the next thing. 

tip 3: Put things away

Put them in the hamper if they're dirty. Put them back in the closets or the drawers. Go through any papers that are lying around. Does it need to get filed? Does it need to be in a different area? Is it urgent? Is it scratch paper? Can it be recycled? We want to put away the jewelry, and the makeup. We want to put school items in their backpack or on their desk if they don't have a desk, wherever they do their homework.

tip 4: items that don’t have a home yet

As you're putting away things if you're thinking to yourself, where does this go? I don't know. Set it aside because those are going to be the things that you need to find homes. If you're thinking to yourself, I don't know what the home is for X, Y, Z, that's what we really need to examine for organization.

Some common homes that we end up creating along the way when it comes to teen organization can include makeup. It could include what I like to call lady business and what the industry calls feminine products. It can include sports items like maybe you need a spot for all your baseball stuff, all your gymnastics stuff, all of your horseback riding stuff, whatever the case may be.

Creating a home for those items so that you can easily find what you need when you need it and easily put it away. That's the goal. It can be very simple. It can be a bin with a label on it. That's a system baby. It could be knowing that this hangs up, your backpack hangs up on this hook, your sports bag goes in this cubby, your sports stuff always goes in the closet in this spot, like whatever the system is. It can be very, very simple and that's fine. Honestly, the more simple the system is, the easier it will be to maintain. So if it feels too simple, but you're like, does this count? Is this too simple or is this a system? Let me tell you, the more simple it is, the better your system is. So lean into simplicity. 

tip 5: talk to your teen about what’s working and what isn’t

As you're creating homes and things, this is going to be a great time to also talk to your teen about what is working and what isn't working for their systems. So often things are out and about in their room because they don't really know where things are supposed to go. They can't really “put it away” if they don't know where it's supposed to go. Sometimes they don't understand that asking these questions is going to lead to making things more simple in the future because they're younger, right?

I know that when I was a teen it was really hard for me to ask questions. Now when I don't know something, oh, I'm asking questions left and right. I am looking things up. YouTube University, I'm looking up hashtags. I'm teaching myself things. When I was younger, asking questions about things that I didn't know about or that made me nervous, I would really freeze up. There are a lot of things, like missed opportunities or roads less traveled that just didn't happen because I was petrified of asking questions or maybe I don't even know that that is a question that I should be asking. So I know you know this as a parent of teens, but that's something to keep in mind.

I talk to so many adults and when we're going back mentally to childhood, if we ask “when you were told, ‘Hey, go clean up your room’. Did you know what that meant?” A lot of people's answer is no. Nope. I had no idea what that was actually supposed to mean. I knew It was messy and it needed to look less messy.

That's why teens and kids end up getting into the habit of shoving things into the closet, shoving things into drawers, and shoving things under the bed because they don't really know what Adults mean when they say, go clean up your room. It's like those puzzle pieces are not really solidified. Puzzle pieces like cleaning up means taking all these items and putting them in their home. If a thing doesn't have an item, let's figure out a home together. Those pieces aren't really connected. So if that wasn't connected for a lot of us as adults, then it could be worth going back to your kids and seeing if those dots are connected for them because we just might assume that they are and they're not. Right? Because again, this comes up all the time for adults, all the time for adults. 

Helping your teens create homes for things and creating homes that work for them, really listening to their input can be amazing. A lot of times you may come up with solutions that look different from how you might have envisioned them. By listening to your kids' ideas about how the solution could go, you can come up with some easy systems that they are so much more likely to maintain because this was their idea. They have the buy-in. And so leaning into that, if it works for them, and being open to things that are different than how you envision can be a game changer.

I talk about this example a lot. Actually, I'll give you a couple of examples. I'll give you three examples. One is a teen room with a client. I talk about this a lot, so if you've heard this, apologies, but it's relevant.

We were figuring out a solution for a teen bedroom closet. Mom was annoyed that the clothes were on the floor. Clothes were not hung up. When we really got into it,  the teen was like, You know what, here's the thing, here's what I would really, really like. We're like, go for it. Like what? We're all ears. Tell us.

And they said I would really like to have a second hamper where I could just put my clean clothes. I don't really like putting them in the drawers. I don't really like hanging them. Some things I'll hang, but most of it I don't care about. If everyone would kind of leave me alone about it, I wish I could have just a second hamper. I could just throw my clean clothes in there and just grab what I need when I need it, and the mom is like, Hey, if. If that works, I'm willing to try it because then it's off the floor. I'm like, what do I care if your t-shirt is rumpled? Like whatever. So they leaned in and worked it out. The teen was able to keep up with the system.

Mom was happy because clothes weren't all over the floor. It was a real win-win. But that's not something that I would have thought of on my own. It's not something that the parent would've thought of on their own, but we leaned in and listened to what the teen wanted and it made all the difference. 

I've worked with young children before where we're talking about folding and I had a four-year-old say to me, they're like, or we could roll it. It was easier for them to roll their clothes and then we could put them in the drawer that way. Yeah. Let's lean in. If you want to roll your clothes, that's easy for you. You're four and now you can help put away laundry, let's do it. 

I had another teen recently where we were figuring out their closet system and what bins to use, and this was more of an ADHD hack. But when we were talking about the type of bins that they preferred to use, we got ones that had slits in them and their parents had seen a video about closet organization. We were watching the video and the bins that they used. The teens said that they liked it because they could see what was inside as far as how full it was, but it wasn't a clear bin. They said that they liked that it wasn't a clear bin because then it wouldn't be visually distracting to them because the closet is open at all times.

They're like, so it'll look, you know, flush, but I can see how full it is, just barely on the inside without seeing everything. That really worked for them. I knew exactly which bins they were. So we just replicated the system at home and the teen has been able to maintain it more easily because they thought of this solution.

So when you have that buy-in, it just makes things a lot easier. Other tips include, This is a big one, we talked about this at the top, but make sure that you have a sentimental bin or two for your teen. These are things that I really recommend getting started early on. I also recommend having a sentimental bin for you.

Tip 6: Sentimental Bins

Everyone in your house I think should have a sentimental bin. There are going to be things that are very important for them to keep or for you to keep but you don't care about displaying them or using them. This could include an old Jersey, old baby clothes, baby blankets, maybe their first teddy bear, that sort of thing.

It could be that the teen doesn't care about it, but the mom really cares about it. And if that's the case, it can go in your sentimental bin. It means that when you're feeling sentimental, you know exactly where all those items are and they're not taking up valuable real estate in other places where you could have things that your kiddo is using, wanting, needing, loving right now.

So I highly recommend sentimental bins. And for even more in-depth information about this, I have a blog post that we will link in the show notes. It's called Prepping Your Teen for College. No matter how old your kids are, there are some tips here that will help you think about how many sentimental items you want to be stored for those pivotal years between when they go off to live on their own and when they actually have an adult home that has any amount of storage. Because we know that there are generally some lean years in between when they do not have all of their belongings. Thinking about that early will really help you long-term in letting your baby birds fly.

We would love to make sure that your questions are answered for a question of the week or a future episode. So we love to hear from you. DM (on Instagram) or you can always email me, carly@tidyrevival.com. We love hearing from you. We love hearing your thoughts about the pod, and thank you so much for hanging out.

If you wanna learn more about how I can help you, feel free to head over to tidyrevival.com to learn how I work with people one-on-one or in our private community. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you'll always have access to the latest episode.

We would also love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to tag us on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. The Tidy Revival podcast is written and hosted by me, Carly Adams, and edited by Brittany McLean. Title Song Maverick is by Dresden The Flamingo.

and until next time, remember that…

 
 
 

Links mentioned in this episode

 
 
Tidy Revival Podcast, DeclutteringCarly AdamsTidy RevivalDecluttering, Teens, Bedroom Organization