Organize A Teenager'S Small Bedroom

Extra shelving and storage bins help organize a messy teen room.

Teenagers are notoriously messy, and this bad habit can appear exaggerated if your teenager has a smaller room. While teens may have an excess of clothing, school papers and other items, organizing the room allows the teen to have easy access to their items while keeping the room clean and tidy just as you want it -- at least for a few days.

Instructions

1. Streamline the number of items in the teen's room. Have the teenager go through her belongings, to throw away unused items and sort other items to place in storage. As a rule of thumb, if the teen hasn't used an item in the past three months, it should either be placed in storage or thrown away.

2. Organize the teen's belongings by separating items by type and size. For example, if he has large DVD and CD collections, create piles for these and create other piles for paperwork, books and other items.

3. Remove large furniture items from the room, if possible, as these items take up vital floor space. Instead of using a large dresser, try stackable plastic bins in the closet. Assign each bin to a specific item, such as underwear, socks or undershirts.

4. Install a hanging shoe rack on the closet door to free up more floor space. Place the most frequently used shoes in the more accessible top half of the shoe rack and the less necessary shoes on the bottom half of the rack.

5. Install wall shelves on at least two walls. The shelves should be at least 24 inches long -- longer if at all possible -- and, if you're installing multiple shelves on each wall, at least 12 inches apart in height. Organize the teen's DVD and CD collection on these shelves as well as miscellaneous items such as memorabilia, photographs, books and random papers.

6. Create a cleanup list to help the teen to keep the room as organized as possible. Set specific days the teen should pick up various items in the room, and include specific trash and laundry days to maintain the organization in the room.

Tags: other items, floor space, least inches, Organize teen, shoe rack