Episode 396: #396: Clutter Free Kids – Secrets from a Preschool Director on How to Keep Kids Clutter Free and Organized

Kathi is joined by early childhood educator (and bonus-daughter) Amanda Thivierge, who shares her top three tips to fight clutter and get your kids in on it.

• Clutter-free is a journey, and we don’t all come by it naturally.
• Modeling for kids is key (and how to do that well).
• Get brutal and say goodbye to the stuff you will not use – BYE-BYE DOILIES!
• And more…

Clutter-Free Home

Are you longing for a place of peace from which you can love others well? The Clutter-Free Home: Making Room for Your Life is your room-by-room guide to decluttering, reclaiming, and celebrating every space of your home.

This episode covers topics such as multipurpose rooms, clutter created through creativity and fun, storage solutions like rolling carts and labeled bins, modeling organizational behavior for kids, and the importance of intentionality with classroom (and home) items. Amanda suggests actively demonstrating and vocalizing cleanup routines and making sure that every item in a learning space has a purpose to reduce distraction and promote focus. The conversation also touches on teacher resource hoarding, strategic toy rotation, and resisting guilt-based accumulation of unused materials. Parents and educators are encouraged to be intentional about what they keep, only saving items with real or re-introducible value.

Three main clutter-free classroom/home routines discussed:
1) If you take something out, put it away.
2) If an item no longer has a use, get it out of the space.
3) Don’t buy things just because they’re on sale “for a possible future project.”

The episode concludes with encouragement for listeners to share their best clutter-free tips for kids for a chance to win a copy of Kathi’s new book, The Clutter-Free Home.