Get Rid of Kids Junk

We have termed our daughter's bedroom The Abyss. The volume of junk that she has accumulated into that small space is incredible. In an effort to help organize her junk, I've purchased shelves, desks, dressers, and closet organizers as incentive to use closed spaces to house often-used items. I've learned through the years that those receptacles only serve to provide more flat space on which to set junk. Instead of using the drawers of her dresser, her clothes are scattered about in heaps upon the floor. The tops of her dresser, desk, and storage units are piled high with junk such as CDs, DVDs, video games and paraphernalia, iPod cables and docks, scraps of paper with website addresses scrawled upon them, crayons and markers, what-nots, stuffed animals, and books. The closet organizer inside of her closet houses her dolls and doll clothes, while the toy bin outside of her closet overflows with toys, shoes, mismatched socks, and dirty clothes. And all the while, the three trashcans placed strategically in the room remain empty.

Short of catching your kid gone from the house overnight, going through his room, and throwing the junk out, how do you get rid of his junk? Follow these tips for getting rid of the junk:

• Schedule a date. Tell your child that you and she are going to get rid of the junk in her room, and schedule an entire day for the task. Prepare her ahead of time by circling the day on the calendar so that she will have a visual reminder of the task.
• Get all of the junk in one location. Begin the day by having her go through the entire house with a trash bag, removing from each room all of her junk and placing it inside of the bag. Have her meet you in her bedroom with the bag when she is finished.
• Sort the junk. Have three boxes labeled as pitch, keep, donate/sell. Ask her to go through the bag of junk she just gathered and put each item into one of the boxes. If an item is broken, put it inside of the pitch box. If it's an age-appropriate item, is used often, or something that cannot be easily replaced and used infrequently, place it in the keep box. Everything else should go into the donate/sell box. As incentive to get rid of the junk, tell her that she can keep the proceeds from anything that she sells.
• Organize the items she will keep. Tell your child to take the items from the keep box and place them in their appropriate place. Remind her that she may only keep the items if she puts them away where they're supposed to go, and the next time you find things out of order, they will go into the pitch box.

After she puts everything away, tell her that she can arrange to sell or donate the items in the donate/sell box. When she discovers that she may make a profit, she might be more apt to rid her room of junk on her own. Also, let your child know that you will have a junk-clearing day twice yearly, and mark those dates on the calendar. That way, she can look forward to getting rid of the junk, and possible making some pocket change in the process.