31: Organizing Your Play Room
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Resources and Links:
Cass From Clutterbug: https://clutterbug.me/meet-cas-2
Prologue and Introduction
I love organization. I sigh with contentment when I see nicely organized shelves and drawers. I spend more time than I’d like to admit browsing organization products.
I bet you’ve read about organization, watched TV shows as others get organized, and browsed the endless Pinterest photos of perfectly aligned and labeled pantries. I’ll leave your pantry to Pinterest, but today I do want to talk about organization as it applies to play spaces.
This is episode 31: Organizing Your Play Room
Playrooms need to be orderly and consistent every time. After your client has warmed up to the room and knows where to find the toys and tools for their therapy, it can pull them out of deeper work to hunt for something that has been an essential tool in their work. This isn’t the same as looking for something that is there (that’s often part of their work). I’m talking about the frustration of trying to do a job when someone has moved your tools.
Cas from Clutterbug (she has a podcast, books, and you can find her on YouTube) created a classification system for organization that I found really helpful. It also explains why people organize differently. Her basic system is the intersection between your preferences on two scales. First, do you like to macro organize (think big picture and big categories) or micro organize (think detailed order with lots of smaller categories)? In other words, do you grab a pile of cars off the playroom floor and prefer to drop them into a bin with all the other vehicles or do you like to line up all the sports cars together, the emergency vehicles together, and the planes together? The second scale is visual. Do you want to see your options or have things put away out of sight? In other words, do you want all the puppets visible in an over the door shoe hanger or two or do you prefer to have all the puppets in a trunk behind the puppet stage and out of sight until needed?
There isn’t a “right” way to organize, but you do need some organization in your playroom. With most children, macro organizing is easier and it’s quicker to put back between clients. You can usually tolerate more toys in a space with macro organizing, too. But, if you prefer to micro-organize, that works, too. You will probably want to be more selective and have fewer toys to help your clean-up go faster. If you like things where you can see them, have adequate shelving with natural dividers to keep similar things displayed together. Many children prefer things to be visually displayed. It shows you all your options. But, you may prefer things to feel less cluttered and more put away. If you work with children with sensory issues, then you don’t want to overstimulate with too much visual input. In those cases, bins with labels work well. Clear bins make the contents visible but also increase the amount that can be seen. If you label, you might want to use pictures instead of words, especially if you work with those who don’t read well or speak your language as a primary language.
So, consider whether you and your clients prefer macro or micro organizing. Then, consider how visible you and your clients need the toys to be.
I like to keep things simple with easy-to-follow systems. Here are three suggestions for systems to organize your space, keeping in mind your macro/micro and visual preferences.
Zones — Divide your play space into the zones you need. If you only have one office, part of your overall space needs to be the area devoted to admin tasks like progress notes and computer work. You don’t want this to be kid-friendly or client-friendly space because it likely stores confidential information. Consider how you set up your space to reflect that this part of the room is not play space. Depending on the ages and ranges of clients you work with, your zones may look different, but keep all the supplies for certain activities together. Maybe you’ll have a dress up zone with all the costumes and a wall mirror together. You might have a reading nook with the books you use. You could have a carpet with a road and town on it and all the cars and vehicles stored close by. Perhaps you have an art area with all the creative supplies. Or a sand zone with the sand tray and miniatures (or sand box and sand toys) in easy reach and no carpet in that area. Some people create zones based on the categories of toys: aggressive release together, nurturing and real-life toys together, and creative toys and materials together. Your zones will be determined by how many toys you have and how it makes sense to group them. What really matters is that your clients can go to the same place to find what they need week after week.
Containers — I never had a lot of time between clients, so I like to be able to quickly toss toys in containers instead of lining up them up individually on shelves. It also reduces the visual clutter. Can you hear my personal preferences? Sometimes a toy can serve as the container, such as a dollhouse where the dolls and furniture are stored or a lego table with the bases attached that contains storage for the lego blocks.
Checklists — I like having a short, quick checklist to help me make sure I’ve checked the sand for buried objects, or remembered to retrieve that hidden object. If you share a playroom, this is really important to prevent office frustrations when others don’t leave the room put back together. It’s an optional step, but it saves my brain power for the clients to have a short list to run through and make sure I am ready for the next client. Short and quick are key words here.
If you share a playroom with other therapists, you need an agreed upon system for setting up the playroom every time. Communicate well and remember that some of your differences might be differences in how you prefer to organize. Speaking of differences, let hear another perspective with Dr. Lee.
Interview with Dr. Kasie Lee
[The interview portion of this episode was not transcribed. To listen to the interview click the episode link at the top of the page.]
Conclusion
I am far from an organizing expert, but I think it helps to identify your organizing preferences. Do you like to macro or micro organize? Do you like things to be visually available because “out of sight is out of mind” or do you prefer to only see what is important for the work right now? Know your preferences because you will be spending a lot of time in this space, but also be aware of what your clients might prefer. Generally, children prefer macro organization that is visible. Most adults prefer for things to be less visible. Of course, it doesn’t have to be all one way. You can combine them.
You might find it helpful to organize your space with zones, containers and checklists. I’d strongly encourage using zones, but containers and checklists are more of a personal preference.
That’s all I’ve got for this episode. Next time, we’re going to talk about role play toys. I think I’ll go organize my desk now.
