Researchers found that living in disorganization makes it harder for your brain to focus, negatively affecting working memory1.
Our brains are made to focus on a few things and keep track of these things for short periods. That is what we mean when we refer to working memory.
If your surroundings are too chaotic, your working memory is distracted1, and your Visual cortex (which has limited processing capacity for competing stimuli in the environment2) may not function optimally.
Constantly living in a chaotic space is often extra hard for people with ADHD1 (predominantly hyper, predominantly inattentive, and combined type).
Those with ADHD already have a poor working memory, and the last thing they need are distractions to slow it down further!
Children with short attention spans need help decluttering.
After your child decides what to keep, send him (or her) to grandma or a babysitter. My kids couldn’t deal with all their leftover stuff. They wanted me to get rid of it! Children with ADHD (ADD) often want to make major decluttering decisions, but they may feel it’s time for mom or dad to take over when that’s done.
Younger kids need parental help to decide what to keep while older kids can usually accomplish this themselves.
My kids were happy to make critical decisions. After that, they pushed as many decluttering tasks on me as they could.
My son went through his room and decided what to keep. The rest he piled in the hall. At that point, his ADHD didn’t allow him to expend more attention on his decluttering project. What he did know was he wanted the discard pile gone, and the order restored immediately! He quickly became overwhelmed and needed me to take over.
That’s ok, but I didn’t want to deal with the chaos of having my family at home while taking care of the mess. I sent the kids swimming and out to dinner with my husband.
Below are my favorite decluttering tips!
Tips for Decluttering Kids’ Bedrooms
- Have a talk with your children about how decreasing clutter in their environment will help them concentrate better! Explain that you will help them declutter their rooms.
- Help your children decide what stays in their bedrooms. Put your favorite items in boxes to keep them safe while you organize the discard pile or label everything with post-it notes, or come up with another creative way of sorting.
- Don’t second guess your kids’ decluttering decisions. Just because you think they should wear the Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt you bought them doesn’t mean your child wants to keep it or wear it! I learned this the hard way!
- Send your kids to Grandma’s or out with your spouse while you restore order.
- If your kids are still at home, put on a film or occupy them in an area of the house separate from where you’re working. They shouldn’t see what you haul out.
- Don’t let your child see what leaves their room. Imagining the excess stuff gone and actually seeing it leave are two different things.
The volume of toys/stuff leaving the bedroom always looks bigger when it’s haphazardly thrown in boxes or bags. Seeing this can be stressful for children, and looking at discarded items a second time gives children an opportunity to second-guess their decluttering decisions.
- Sort the leftover items into categories;
- Hand-me-downs
- Sell
- Trash
- Second-hand store
- Sentimental items.
- When you’ve got these sorted, you’ll probably have several random things left.
- Organize these items into categories.
- Misplaced items
- Recycling
- Be sure to take the batteries out before tossing toys with moving parts.
- Organize these items into categories.
- Lock all your kids’ donation items in your room or the garage when you can’t finish the same day.
- Once you’ve placed the discard pile out of sight and out of mind, restore order to your child’s bedroom.
- Dispose of the donation pile as soon as possible these items tend to creep back into your home.
These are the steps we followed when decluttering our kids’ rooms. I hope they help you too!
I made this video about the wonderful changes we saw in our kids once we decluttered their rooms and redecorated them in basically a monochrome decorating scheme.
In the YouTube Video, I talk about the benefits of specific changes. Many changes we made are easy to do and don’t require painting! I hope this video gives my post more clarity.
Check out some of my favorite blog posts below!
See how we organized the drawers in my daughter’s tiny bedroom in the video below!
Sources for my post on decluttering to help kids concentrate better.
1, Medically Reviewed by Nayana Ambardekar, MD (2021) ‘’How Clutter can Affect Your
Health’’ WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/balance/ss/slideshow-clutter-affects-health
2, McMains, S., & Kastner, S. (2011). Interactions of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in
human visual cortex. The Journal of neuroscience: the official journal of the Society for
Neuroscience, 31(2), 587–597. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3766-10.2011
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21228167/
Copyright Annie Eklöv