When I was a little girl my mom often gave family friends a tour of my bedroom. My bedroom was the most organized and clean space in our home and I was the teenager. I remember clearly one year that I had requested my birthday gift to be a room makeover. Thinking the first step was painting the walls, I was told the paint color I chose was off limits. So instead I chose to paint the inside of my reach-in closet; a small space but never-the-less it gave me the freedom to use color.
My decorating skills were good, but what my parents and others saw in me were my incredible organizing skills. I could organize and put together anything. I would plan and organize back to school parties, organize small spaces to hold lots of items, and early on I even started budgeting with my humble allowance. Then one day I decided I wanted to get a job. I walked from my childhood home in Garland, Texas to the main street near my home where many fast food restaurants were located. I walked into my first interview at Long John Silver’sâ„¢ without knowing how to prepare or even telling my parents what I was doing. While I did not land that job, I did at the very next interview at Bonanza Steakhouse ®.
While walking was my main source of transportation, I decided I would learn how to use the local Dart transit system. I began taking the bus to friends that lived across town and to the mall and at times I even hired a taxi to get me where I needed to be ¦all using my own money and my own know how.
I had a very healthy home life and my parents gave me a large amount of responsibility around the home even while I worked part-time, attended school, and had extracurricular activities. My responsibilities included all the household laundry, ironing, unloading the dishwasher, gardening, and mowing our entire, extremely large, yard.
Now that I am all grown up, I can look back and see how accepting responsibilities and my upbringing has placed me in a career as a Professional Organizer. I can see the traits starting at a young age that I mirrored from watching my father. He was, and still is, very organized. Dad always worked from a calendar and planned ahead for everything. Even to this day my dad starts thinking of what to purchase as a baby gift for his great grandchild at just the announcement of the pregnancy.
Importance of organization
So why are your kids organized ¦.. or not? It might be because of your habits and lifestyle. As parents you play a major role in influencing your children to acquire these skills and habits. Often parents decide that it is easier to do things themselves than to teach their children how to manage responsibilities. Remember that handling responsibilities well as children helps them become responsible adults.
As a busy mom, I need all the help I can get keeping my home picked up, clean and organized, and I want to raise my boys to be young men of honor, courage and yes, to be organized. Given the opportunity, they will figure out with time and practice how to balance the responsibilities with having fun.
- set clear expectations
- give them the right tools
- avoid giving into their complaints
- be upfront with the consequences of not accomplishing their tasks
Take it from me, whether your child is organizing a lemonade stand, a party, or their room, organizing is an important skill that will follow your child into college, their first apartment, a future home, and their workplace.
Instilling this skill in your child will be a great way your child can stand out amongst their peers and create a successful future.
Check out this super helpful baby teeth chart!
Celesteblue – The intent was to show that teaching any child – including my parents teaching me does make a difference. While I have short comings in other areas of my life, I have been trained well for learning to be responsible and organized. Something this is very difficult to learn if you miss it as a child. I just shared my story as a result of what my parents did. Thanks for sharing.
“Often parents decide that it is easier to do things themselves than to teach their children how to manage responsibilities. Remember that handling responsibilities well as children helps them become
responsible adults.”
This is such an important message to take away from this post. I want my children to learn to be independent, responsible AND yes, organized too. While I may need to give some oversight and direction (over, and over, and over again), they will never learn these traits if I don’t make them accountable by doing it themselves.
I appreciate the intent of the article but it comes off as just being a “Look how great I was” article. The tips at the end might be helpful in a perfect world.
I love this! I was free as a kid to take the city bus anywhere I wanted and found that I saved every penny to be able to ride or purchase something at the end of that ride.