Welcome to Part II of the Aurdal Custom Closet for Kids conversation! Part I of this conversation focused on designing and installing the Aurdal custom closet in our son’s room (CLICK HERE for that post!). This post will share everything that came AFTER we installed the closet — organizing! Keep reading to hear all about kids’ closet organization ideas using the Ikea Aurdal system!
Organizing with Kids’ Needs in Mind
In order to have a chance at succeeding with kids’ closet organization, you need to be sure the systems you’re putting in place work for the person who’s using them.
Organizing Don’ts
Perfect stacks of clothes look lovely, but if your child can’t fold their clothes, stack nicely, or reach shelves, it’s not a wonderful system.
Fancy hangers at the top of the closet may be an efficient use of space, but if your child can’t reach them, they won’t be able to get dressed or put their clothes away independently.
Beautiful labels are helpful, but not if your child can’t read.
Sorting clothing by color or occasion might make sense to YOU but if your child can’t (or won’t) differentiate when putting clothes away, the time and effort you spend organizing that way is a waste.
Organizing Dos
Instead, keep your child’s size, interests, needs, and abilities in mind when setting up their closet. Use hooks, drawers, and bins as best you can to meet their needs. This might mean sacrificing aesthetics, but it’s worth it.
Keep frequently needed items the most accessible.
Don’t expect perfection.
Use hooks instead of hangers whenever possible.
Get your child’s input on how they’d like their closet arranged.
Work with your children the first couple (or dozen) times to build habits and expectations.
Since my son has trouble focusing at the best of times and closet organization isn’t something he’s interested in, I wanted a system with hard-and-fast rules that was easy to maintain. We used bigger bins and simple categories. We made the systems easy to maintain (meaning if he’s too lazy to fold his shorts, it’s okay — the closet still functions).
Working with your kids to design and organize their closet will have better results than doing it on your own and then expecting them to maintain it.
Kids’ Closet Organization
There’s a place for everything in my son’s closet.
Hanging Clothes
The closet we designed has three sections for hanging clothing. Each section has a specific purpose.
School Shirts
He wears a uniform to school, so his school shirts and blazers have a hanging section all on their own — a low area that’s easy to reach. We place them to the left so that we can tuck them away in the summer but easily grab them during the school year. There’s extra space in this section, and that’s what he needs.
This is also where extra hangers live.
Seasonal Shirts
The right side of the closet has two spaces for hanging clothes — one higher and one low. I organized his shirts here by season. Since these pictures were taken in the winter, the long sleeve shirts are on the bottom and the short-sleeved shirts are higher. In the spring, they will swap these to keep the seasonally appropriate clothes easily accessible.
Disclaimer: The shirts are arranged in a “rainbow” pattern to create a pretty picture, but rearranging them in any order will not affect the organization of this space.
Folded Clothes
The four drawers in the center of the custom closet hold a variety of items.
School Pants
The top drawer holds 6 pairs of folded grey pants, which are for school. The drawer holds nothing else. It has a single purpose (easy to keep straight)
Other School Clothes
The second drawer is a continuation of the “school uniform” theme. This drawer has several bins inside it to act as dividers.
One bin is full of casual school spirit t-shirts. My son only wears these on specific occasions and keeps them separate from his other t-shirts to find them easily.
The other bin holds school ties, of which he has several.
Finally, his two belts are rolled up and stored in the space to the right of the bins when not in use.
Again, this is a very niche purpose for this drawer, but that’s helpful for my son.
Shorts
The third drawer houses slippery athletic shorts, which he pretty much lives in all summer. While they start out folded when I do the laundry, they don’t stay that way, and I’ve given up trying. It really doesn’t matter to me, as long as the shorts end up in the right spot.
There are also a few pairs of more formal khaki shorts.
Jeans & Sweaters
Finally, the bottom drawer holds the least-used items in this closet: jeans (2 pairs) and sweaters (2). While I love the boy in jeans, he only wears them when forced to. I don’t know why I continue to stock his closet with a sweater or two; he doesn’t touch the things. As you can tell from the picture, the sweater he has still has tags on it and probably still will when I pass it on.
The dresser in the bedroom stores other items such as bathing suits, underwear, socks, sweatpants, t-shirts, and pajamas.
Shelves & Bins
Finally, the top half of the closet is mostly full of shelves. I grabbed four large felt bins (also available in tan) and spaced the shelves apart enough to accommodate them. To keep the systems in place, I also added metal-labeled bin clips so it is easy to tell what’s inside. I created custom labels for the clips, which are available for purchase in my Etsy shop.
Four categories in the felt bins. There are also some plastic bins all the way up top.
Travel/Bags
This bin holds an extra backpack, sleeping bag, a duffle bag, and a few other miscellanous items used when we travel.
Bedding
We store extra sheets and a heavy blanket (out of season) in this bin.
Too Big Clothing
We are often the lucky recipients of hand-me-downs. This is where they go until they can be used.
Miscellaneous
While I’m ordinarily against bins labeled “miscellaneous” this one contains toys and fidgets and other items my son still wants, but definitely doesn’t need. The bin is a great limit to stop his collection from getting out of hand.
Memory Boxes
The two smaller bins at the top of his closet are memories (old t-shirts, trophies, beloved baby toys, art projects, etc.). My son said no to labels for these bins but the lack of labels makes me twitchy.
Finally, there’s one smaller shelf just on top of the drawers were little handheld games are currently stored. Eventually this space may be used for books or other small items he wants displayed.
Closet Floor
The closet floor is a dangerous place to store items because it often leads to clutter. With the Aurdal closet system, there’s about a 6″ gap under the horizontal shelves. We used this space to store extra shoes, of which my son does not have many.
It is my goal to keep the floor clear of any other items.
Closet Doors
Have you noticed there are a few “boy essentials” missing from this closet? That’s right. Not a hoodie or a hat to be found. Oh wait, he’s got a ton of them.
To store hoodies and hats, we hung hooks on his closet doors. These hooks are heavy duty and secured to our (hollow) doors with a series of anchors. I was worried that command hooks just wouldn’t be up to the task, plus we’ve had them fall off doors before.
The hats hang on the top rack of hooks and the sweatshirts are on the bottom.
Kids’ Closet Organization
So, that’s how we organized our teen son’s closet. Again, we used the Ikea Aurdal closet system, but many of these principals will work regardless of what kind of closet you have.
When kids grow, their needs change and closet systems will have to be adjusted accordingly.
