One of my favourite ways to keep my home organised is by creating zones with a specific purpose or theme. I find allocating a certain area or space in my home to cater to our needs in this way, not only keeps my home more organised but helps our whole family know exactly where an item should go or where to find a specific item. This therefore saves me time putting stuff away and answering questions of where things are placed.
When talking about zones, I am not talking about rooms in your home. I know a bedroom is a sleeping zone, the kitchen is the food zone and the laundry is the clothes washing zone. I am talking about establishing zones or area's for a specific purpose within those rooms.?
How to create a zone
To achieve this I first had to look at the habits and actions of our family. What did we spend the most time doing and what possessions in our home did we love and use the most? As a family we love to watch DVD's, craft, read books, listen and dance to music, play on the Wii, swim and play with certain toys, like lego.
After spending time assessing what my children are drawn to the most in our home, I then established zones within certain rooms to cater to those needs. As my children love to craft, I created a craft area that was easy for them to use and create with. As my children love to read books, I created a children's book section that was easy for them to access. Doing this has made a real improvement on how organised my home is and created less mess for me to clean up with a large family.
I also worked hard on keeping the zone area's simple looking and child friendly. I use storage products such as shelves, baskets and containers to help create order and to make sure they are functional for everyone in our family to use. I have a very practical theme in our home and with so many young children it has been a real necessity.?
Examples of zones
Here are some examples of zones we have around our home:
The DVD Zone. They are all stored in one place in our home. Yes, I have quite a few DVD's.?It is cheaper as a family of nine to buy a DVD than go to the movies. I also acquired quite a few DVD's when I was doing movie reviews here on my blog :)
The Wii remote zone. One thing that drives me crazy is coming into our rumpus room and finding all the Wii remotes scattered all over the floor. They are really an expensive item to replace and I like to keep them in good condition, so I created a basket for all Wii related products to be stored. It has been working well for us so far!
I personally love children's books and to help my children read them more I rearranged our book shelves so that all of the children's books were grouped together in one place on our shelves. I also made sure they were organised by height order. The younger children's books are down lower so they can reach them and the older children's books {which are not shown in this picture} are placed up higher for them to reach.?
For our craft zone I have a large basket placed next to our kitchen table full of craft supplies. This is where I keep newspapers, egg cartons, cereal boxes, buttons, ribbons, scrap coloured paper, material and other fun craft supplies for my children to use. They can get supplies out of the basket and get creative on our kitchen table any time they like {except when we are having dinner of course!} and can easily put the supplies back in the basket when they have finished.?
Our music zone. This is the state that it normally looks in. Flute and music scattered everywhere. I keep music stands and other musical instruments in the corner next to the piano and my children know this is where the music practice happens. They often get together here to have fun bashing out tunes.?
As my children love to colour in we have a colouring in zone. In our rumpus room we have a small desk dedicated to colouring in. There are some books to chose from, paper underneath the desk for drawing and a designated basket for pencils and another one for crayons and markers.?
As we are a large family, I find that for my children it can be hard to feel like they have their own space and personal area or zone. So for each of my children I gave them a special personal zone. Here is an example of Liberty's zone. She has her own shelf on the wall in her room. It is her shelf to decorate however she likes. Everyone knows it is her stuff and her zone. She can change it whenever she likes and I try not to influence what she places on there.?
Benefits of creating zones
I have found creating zones in our home allows our children to easily know where to go to have fun. In our craft zone they know where to find supplies, where they can spread themselves out to create and where to place items when they are finished. It stops the craft activities spreading to the lounge room, the bedrooms and other rooms in the house therefore leaving less mess and stress for me when I am trying to keep track of many kids with a large family.?
At different times and seasons of your family life, zones will need to change and even rotate. For example, I established a doll house zone for several months in my lounge room for my children and after that excitement wore off I replaced it with a lego zone. After that excitement wore off I replaced it with a My Little Pet Shop zone and so forth. I rotate certain toy zones to allow my children to play and use toys that we own and give them the freedom to spread toys out and even leave them there overnight or several days if need be.?
Often when I establish zones like this for a short time, the whole family get's involved and plays with them. It is wonderful to watch all of my children playing together and helping each other be creative in such a way. This to me is what creating zones in your home is all about. Helping to bring your family together by having fun and to find more joy and happiness as a family.
Source: http://www.sevencherubs.com/2012/10/home-inspiration-creating-zones-in-your.html
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