Mommy Monday: closet organization for preschoolers

As some of you will remember, I moved from a small apartment into a larger home over Thanksgiving. This means, of course, that I get to go back to the drawing board to re-organize everything for our new space! It is both thrilling and exhausting. One of my top priorities has been my 4-year-old daughters' bedroom- I want the girls to feel settled as quickly as possible. Although it is far from done, I made some major changes to their closet organization recently that I want to share with you today. (*update: check out how I made the closet even more functional, and a whole lot more attractive, in this latest post*)

In my old apartment, I used a small hallway closet for the girls' clothes and put everything in bins with a low hanging rod so they could reach everything and keep everything organized on their own. I shared that closet setup in a previous blog post- click on the picture to read more about it. For small spaces, I still think that is a good option, especially for younger children.

When we first moved in, I just stuck those same bins in their new closet, along with the dress-up clothes that has previously been in another closet:

There were a few problems with this setup. 1. It looked ugly, which is a problem since I had already removed the accordion-style wooden doors in front of the closet to avoid pinched fingers. 2. Their clothes take up more space now that they are bigger, and it wasn't all fitting nicely into the bins they had been using. 3. The hanging rod was way too high, and the little rod I had used in their old closet was way too short to use in their new closet.

Enter the trofast organizers! IKEA has always been a go-to, and I had been eying the trofast organizers for a while. They are built so that, besides storing things in bins, kids can climb up them like stairs! After pondering various solutions for their hanging clothes, I realized that this was my chance to finally get some and use them well. They were a perfect fit!

The girls love it. They can easily reach all of their clothes, and they very quickly figured out where everything goes and have kept everything organized on their own with no problems. I certainly wouldn't want them climbing up and down every day, but for the occasional dress it is safe and easy. And it looks so much nicer now!

In case you are interested, here is how we organized each of the bins for their current clothes:

The great thing about these organizers is that they can be used for so many things, if I ever decide to stop using them in the closet, I know we will easily find other uses for them.

How do you organize your preschoolers' closet? Have any of you used the trofast organizers? Leave a comment!