Our house is pretty organized although there’s always work to be done!)  Our girls’ bedroom was in need of an organization makeover!  Our daughters are 5 and almost 7 years old and they have lots of Legos, American Girl clothes and accessories and Barbies, books, stuffed animals, Roominate kits and more.  Our strategy of sorting toys into bins was no longer working.   Clean up was becoming more and more difficult.  That signals time for a change!

I used an Ikea Expedit bookcase in high gloss turquoise and used half of the cubbies for organizing American Girl clothes and accessories.  The other cubbies store their other toys.  When I was finished with the project, and unveiled it to my girls, my older daughter squealed, “Oh, thank you, Mommy!  I love it!”  That brings such joy to a professional organizer. 🙂 Hopefully we’re instilling in our children the value of being organized, so they can find what they’re looking for which will hopefully help them be more productive, efficient adults someday.

To organize the American Girl clothes, I bought narrow tension rods and doll clothing-sized hangers and hung everything up.  This way it’s easier for them to see what clothes they have for their dolls vs. having to dig through a bin to find something.  The bins on the bottom row now contain doll accessories.  When they become available, I will be purchasing drawer inserts at Ikea to store and organize these smaller items.   I also sorted through their books in their bookcase and took out all the board books and made room for more age appropriate books.  It was a small change but an impactful one.  It even opened up a shelf in the bookcase that is now home to their notepads, and current drawings and doodles that they’re still working on.  I still need a few more bins from the Container Store and to label everything but I love how it came together.