8 Top Tips For A Clutter Free Home With Children

Now before we get into it, let me just say from the very beginning...my home is NOT clutter free right now.
Certainly not to the level I would like it to be.
These lovely photographs of this beautiful home? They are stock images. It is NOT mine. Mine looks nothing like this.
So you might wonder what gives me the authority to produce a post giving you tips on reducing the cluttered look of your home when I've yet to achieve that in my own...well, I'm trying! It's a work in progress and to be honest, with 3 children under the age of 5 in the house I'm not sure it's one that will ever truly be completed...but TRYING to reduce the clutter is enough for me right now, it helps, it makes things feel more organised and it helps me to keep a feeling of control over the chaos of my life.
So no its certainly not perfect...but with the tips I've picked up over the years being put into practise, it's slowly getting better.
Below are some of the tips I find most useful for helping to reduce the level of clutter in our home, along with some suggestions from friends and fellow bloggers too...I hope you find them useful!

1) Have a stair basket - If you find that you end up with a pile of stuff sitting on the stairs waiting to be taken up every day like I do, then you know it tends to contribute toward the overall cluttered look and feel of the house....a stair basket gives a place to put those things that keeps them out of site, plus you can carry it up and down with you as you return those things to their upstairs homes. I purchased this east2eden Wicker Seagrass Stair Storage Basket with Carry Handle (White & Pure White Liner) from Amazon and I love that it has a lid so everything is properly out of sight!
2) Purge regularly, but ESPECIALLY before Christmas & birthdays - My children recieve a lot of gifts from family members on special occasions, and with 3 of them the house quickly ends up completely taken over by toys. It's our biggest problem when it comes to keeping the house tidy as there are just SO MANY TOYS. I try to purge them every few months so that anything that hasn't been played with, is broken or has pieces missing, or the boys have simply grown out of is either chucked away or given to charity depending on its condition.  We always make sure that we have a big purge session before those special occasions to make way for the new toys that will be coming in. Lauren from Scrapbook Blog says "I clear stuff into boxes so it's out of sight and then once a month go through the boxes and chuck the stuff I clearly haven't missed in the past few weeks! I do try and chuck/donate stuff as I go but find a once-monthly session makes the task seem less daunting"
3) Have suitable storage for everything - It's impossible to keep a home looking clutter free if you simply don't have enough storage available to give everything its own place. I found it impossible to keep our laundry pile looking respectable for ages until I realised I was still trying to squeeze 5 peoples laundry into the same tiny laundry basket we had when it was just the two of us. Leanne from A Slice Of My Wales swears by the Ikea Kallax units for solving all of her storage needs - we use them for toy storage too and I have to agree, they are ideal!
4) Rotate Toys - If your children have a lot of toys and you don't have enough storage space for them, but they're things they DO want and play with then rotating toys can be an ideal solution. Le Coin De Mel has a great post on how this works for her - with a family of 6 in a 2 bedroom home, she swears by toy rotation! We practice this too...we have two large toy chests on the landing and every few months we swap the toys around so different ones go into the toy chests and new ones come out to play. The kids love it, it feels like new toys every time!
5) Hallway Organisation - I bought a dedicated shoe cupboard and coat stand a few months ago, and it's made such a difference to my hallway. I make sure that everybody has their own peg on the coat stand so that we can get our hats, scarves and coats quickly without rummaging through everybody elses and the shoe cupboard means no tripping over piles of shoes on our way out of the door and no kicking off your shoes and leaving them there when you come home! If you have shelf space available, you could also consider giving everyone their own little wooden crate for their belongings like Emmys Mummy has done.
6) Don't Sweat The Small Stuff - I have a tendency to be a little too sentimental when it comes to holding on to things, and on our last clearout I found approximately 100 different birthday and Christmas cards that I'd stashed away...most of them were from people I'm not even particularly close to, so why I felt the need to keep them all I don't know! Try to be as ruthless as possible when clearing things out, and don't be guilted in to keeping every tiny little bit of plastic tat that your little ones bring into the house. Rachel from Coffee Cake Kids says she finds chucking away things like party bag toys and Happy Meal toys as often as possible really helps keep the clutter down!
7) Get the kids involved - Trying to keep a home clutter free all on your own is going to be tough, so getting the children involved can be the biggest help of all. Emily from Twin Mummy & Daddy advocates teaching them from as early on as possible where all of their toys "live" so that they can help to tidy them away and get them back in the right place.
8) Go Paper Free - I find that mail piling up and too many print outs really contribute to the clutter in our home. We found switching to paper free bank statements and bills helped a lot, and we also make sure that school letters and hospital appointment letters are thrown out straight away too....I just take a photo of the letter on my phone before throwing it out so I have it to refer back to, an idea I got from Alex over at www.bump-to-baby.com.
And finally, Organise, Organise, Organise! You can so much more use of the space in your home and keep life far simpler if you have a system in place and a specific place for everything...obviously this can take some time to achieve but I'd highly recommend taking a look at Organised Jo's blog if you want some inspiration! I absolutely love her idea of using baskets to organize your cupboards.
Don't forget to share your own top tips below. We're all in this together!!!
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