subject: Clear Your Home Of Baby Clutter [print this page] As a mother of young children you may sometimes feel like you are overwhelmed with baby gear. If you are a new mom or you've recently added a new baby to an established family of older children, you probably feel especially overwhelmed with baby items. Is there any relief for families that feel overrun by gear for their kids? How can a mom simplify?
Well, never fear! Here are some ideas for relief. There are many things you can do to aid your quest to manage the loads of gear your baby requires. The following are just 3 simple things to help simplify baby gear. Just organize, prioritize, and consolidate!
Let's start with organization. Your guideline for organization should be to help everything find its place. Sounds simple right? But this can be tricky in practice. Creating boxes or bins is a great place to start. These receptacles can be devoted for baby items when they are not in use. That will help keep things from cluttering high traffic areas in your home.
Additionally, you can use wall space to manage your clutter. Organizational tactics like using wall space are great because it puts your walls to great use, when usually walls are just used for decoration. Here is a specific example. Clear a baby sling from lying about by placing it on a hook right by your front door. This makes the baby sling accessible when you are on your way out the door. Using wall space will keep your gear out of the way without having to throw loved things away.
Next, work on prioritizing. Prioritizing refers to looking at all your baby gear and determining what is the most important. This step will be different for every mom. There are some items that you may feel are essential, and others that are just nice to have around every once in a while. Once you have prioritized, then you can put highly important items in the most convenient places, and lower priority items can be tucked away.
Let's use our baby sling example again. You know how much use your baby sling gets. If it's used for your daily walk, then have it close at hand (i.e. hanging on a hat rack, or on a mud room hook). If you only use your sling for the convenience of your weekly grocery shopping trip, then you are safe to hang it in a coat closet, or the like.
Lastly, it's time to consolidate. You may find this to be the most difficult step, but it will probably give you the most relief from gear overload. Now that you've organized and prioritized, you can consolidate gear that's been deemed "excess."
Let's use our baby sling example once again. Because a baby sling does the same job that an infant stroller does, consider consolidating so you don't have double the items doing the same jobs. Infant strollers are big, bulk and only used for a few months anyway. Knowing this, your infant stroller could be a great candidate for consolidation measures. Donate excess items to people who are in need of baby items. You will do yourself a favor by clearing clutter from your life, and the recipient will appreciate new baby items.
