How to Organize a Kid’s Room with ADHD

Here’s the truth: Children with ADHD often struggle with executive functioning skills, such as planning, prioritizing, and task completion, which can make organizing and maintaining a tidy room extremely challenging.

Kids with ADHD often work better with clear systems and simplified environments, and setting up an environment with this in mind can help reduce overwhelm, develop independence, and reduce decision fatigue, helping your child execute their executive functioning skills.

Today, we’re covering some of the tips I love to use (and recommend) for parents of children with ADHD to help keep your kid’s room clutter-free and organized: 

It’s Not Just on Your Child. It Involves You, Too.

Why? Because you’re their teacher. They’re learning from YOU. If you don’t have an organized room, they don’t see the point of why they should do it (it’s not because they have ADHD and you don’t).

You’re a team in this, and you want to represent that team of what you expect by doing it yourself, and therefore, they have to do it themselves because they’re in your house. Your child needs a clear, definitive expectation of what to do, and if you want them to do it, you need to do it, too.

5 Tips for Organizing Your Kid’s Room With ADHD

When you’re organizing your kid’s room with ADHD, you’re trying to set them up for success—you’re providing them with resources that will allow them to function and get into routines they can follow.

It WILL take time, but these tips will help you organize your child’s room and help your child be more organized all in one (and you’ll see it impact other aspects of their life, too).

 #1. Create Clear Cleaning Zones

You want to create clear cleaning  “zones” by separating the room into specific areas. A good rule of thumb is to create two main zones: one for sleeping and one for playing.

Everything needs to have a home—a spot for their homework pile, a space to sleep, clothes, or getting ready each day, whatever your child needs (it’ll depend on their age and your lifestyle). You can also use visual cues to help further separate zones, like grouping specific toy colors, adding a rug to a specific area, or even adding an accent wall to associate with a specific “zone” of the room.

#2. Use Open and Visible Storage

Picture open shelving and clear bins—you want your child to be able to see where their things are. There’s a saying that if you don’t see it, it never existed, and it’s very applicable to kids with ADHD.

So, avoid the deep drawers and closed boxes that hide items. These can cause frustration, and your child might get frustrated because they don’t know where their things are.

#3. Limit Choices

You want to only have a select few items in their room, such as toys, books, and outfits. That way, again, it reduces their decision fatigue when it comes to cleaning and storage.

Once you know where things are and you’re storing the additional things away, you can start rotating them regularly. This can also help reduce overwhelm, decision fatigue, and keep your kids more excited about the things they have.

What you store away depends on their phase of life. For example, right now, I’m rotating my kid’s toys, and they love it because they think every rotation they’re getting “new” toys—but they’re one and three years old. 

#4. Label Everything 

Basically, it’s exactly what it sounds like. You want to use simple words or nice pictures to put labels on bins, shelves, and the items they store. Try to use the same color pen and background sticker to label things so it doesn’t look confusing. 

Your eyes can play tricks on you, so you want to keep it as simple and consistent as possible (which will also help you establish a routine).

#5. Establish a Daily Cleaning Routine

Every day, you want to have a routine or a reset list that you go through every time, every day. It might be the five minutes a day they get to make their bed when they wake up, or right before they go to bed, they get into the routine of getting their clothes set up for the next day.

These daily routines are what help ADHD kids thrive and really see their ADHD as their superpower because they’re not distracted by clutter (or the decision-making of what to do about it). 

You have to be very consistent, and you can literally create a checklist or “chore chart” for both you and your kids to reference. And don’t just do it yourself, that’s gonna be exhausting. Have them help!

For example, some of the cleaning routines we have in our home include:

• Putting toys back in their bins
• Putting books back on the shelf
• Dirty clothes go in the hamper
• Straighten their bed
• Throw away any trash
• Folding and putting away clothes

And then for a weekly reset, I recommend choosing a day of the week to rotate toys, swap things out, wipe the shelves in the desk, and pick an item to donate. I also have a rule in our house that whatever we bring into our house, we have to get rid of something, it could even be a paperclip—but it has to find a new home to make space for the stuff we’re bringing in!

This rule made packing our bags and moving to Germany easier, too! And if you’re curious about our move, listen to this bonus episode from the Launching Forward with ADHD podcast here.

Bonus Tip: Make it Fun!

Part of what motivates kids with ADHD is making it a game or a challenge, so take this as your sign to make cleaning and organizing fun! Start by setting a time (5-10 minutes will work) and then see who can beat the clock or can get the most done! 

You can even play your favorite song, dance, and clean up! After they’re done, offer a little reward for what they accomplished! Then you get to enjoy the rest of the day tidied and organized.

The Impact of a Clean and Organized Space for Your ADHD Child

Regardless of what other people are saying about having an organized room and how to keep it tidy, it really is based on the storage systems you’re using, the stuff you have in your home (and in their rooms), and the routines you create to KEEP it tidy.

Your kid with ADHD experiences clutter in a completely different way than you do—and you just have no idea what it’s like for them to go into a room that has lots of clutter. What may look and feel normal to you doesn’t feel the same to them.

But when you do switch into an organized room, you can start to see and feel it. 

I hope this was helpful for you and your child! If you’re looking for more ways to stay organized or help your child with ADHD stay organized, download my freebie, Minimalism for ADHD here.