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How To Keep Your Children's Things Tidy

Hello again,

I don’t know if you listen to Simon Mayo on Radio two but he has a great feature on messy teenagers – the Facebook photos are unbelievable!

Anyway, I have two children and although they haven’t yet reached the teenage stage, I find myself constantly either tidying up after them or reminding them to tidy their belongings up.

Apart from making sure the important stuff like school letters, party invites etc go into the relevant pocket on our calendar instead of being dumped on the floor or down the back of the sofa, I have come up with one other strategy – a secret drawer!  Each of my children have one of these – it’s a drawer that no one else is allowed to tidy but it is crammed with all the little bits of toys and small things like hair clips, little Barbie clothes, jewellery, toy cars and dinosaurs, single jigsaw pieces etc etc.  Great if you need to find that single lost bit of a jigsaw and really great that you can close it and the mess disappears for a while!!

My daughter's secret drawer.

 

 

 

 

Eventually, a time will come when you can’t get it shut anymore and you have to face the inevitable clear out.  Even though it just starts filling up again, it’s much more efficient to do a big clearout than lots of little ones so I leave it as long as I can. I think the kids like it because they can rummage around in it and find bits and bobs they thought they’d lost, a bit like a treasure chest to them!

I’ve also been asking people on Facebook to see what they do and this is my favourite which I will try to implement because I like the “team spirit” approach:

 “We have 'tidy up time' every night. The whole family (2 adults, 4 kids) go from room to room & clear it completely”

However, some things just can’t be tidied because there is nowhere to put them.  Like the drawings and paintings my little boy brings home from preschool or the certificates my daughter gets from school.  That’s why we’ve developed Childhood Memories: a keepsake storage file.  Designed to store eight years of memories, each section has prompts to fill in birthday memories, friends, favourite activities and more but also has an A4 pocket to store artwork and certificates without folding them.   It’s on sale soon so keep checking our website, Facebook and Twitter for more details.

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Spring Clean Your Handbags

Hi, it’s Kerri here.  I am the MD of K TWO Products and this year, we’ve decided to make a few changes to our blog, and one of them is that I’m going to be writing it!  Blogging isn’t something I’m use to doing but I hope that what you read is interesting and helpful. 

I always wish I was more organised and look on with envy at friends who’s kitchen drawers and piles of paperwork are all neatly sorted out!   Juggling work, home and kids means I might get 1 hour a day to myself often in the evening when the kids are in bed and I am often tempted away from organising by a glass of wine in front of the TV!  However when I do get a chance to get things around the house organised I feel 100 times better and I always like a simple, quick solution to getting things easy to access and neat and tidy!

When it comes to March, its time for spring cleaning, and even a little goes a long way.  If you have to prioritise then I’d recommend sorting out something you see and use every day as it will give you a real benefit.  So today I’m going to chat about organising handbags –

That means emptying out your handbags, getting rid of those sweet papers, old bus tickets and old raisins which hide away in the nooks and crannies of your bag.  When I cleaned out my handbag last night, I found 2 cinema stubs, 7 bus old bus tickets and 2 pen lids (the pens were nowhere to be found – how does that always happen??).

My nice tidy handbag!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, once your handbags are tidy, it’s time to organise them.  No more dumping in them in the bottom of your wardrobe or cramming them into a drawer; I found this ingenious way of hanging them up – it saves room and displays them all so you don’t forget about that old favourite.

What you need:

• A length of sturdy material (I used an old belt)
• 2 types of old ribbon (some thin and one thick)
• Needle and thread

Instructions:

1.  Cut your thin ribbon into lengths approximately 30 cm long

2.  Carefully sew the middle of the ribbon onto your material/belt at regular intervals (the amount of ties you want will depend on how many bags you have!)

3.  Sew the large piece of ribbon (which should be about 40cm) to the top of your material/belt

4.  And that’s it!  Hand your handbag tidy onto a hanger or on a hook, tie up your handbags and keep the bottom of your wardrobe tidy!  Give yourself a big pat on the back because they cost about £30 to buy.

Let me know how you got on by commenting below or on Facebook or Twitter.

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