Organize your closet: The 3-day plan, Part 2

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Breakfast of champions
Saturday morning
8:30 a.m.

You can't expect the troops to put in a full morning's work on an empty stomach, so start out the day with a family favorite like French toast. While everyone's gathered around the table, explain the first phase of the morning's mission: Emptying the closets and tossing everything into a giant heap in the middle of the floor. For more simple family breakfast ideas and recipes, click here!

Mess patrol
Saturday morning
9:30 a.m.

Now that the closets are empty, it's time to move on to the next phase of the operation: sorting through the resulting mountain of stuff. At this point, you simply want your kids to divide the mountain into three distinct piles:

• Stuff that belongs in my room;
• Stuff that belongs in someone else's room;
• Stuff that doesn't belong in this house at all.

Time off for good behavior
Saturday noon
12:00 p.m.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill rather grouchy, so give the troops some time off for good behavior. Take them for a swim at the community center or treat them to an afternoon movie matinee. You've all earned a break.

Sizing up the enemy
Saturday afternoon
3:00 p.m.

Now that you've had a chance to size up the enemy -- the piles of stuff on the floor! -- you should have a clear indication of what's got to find its way back into each closet. Armed with that knowledge, you can start coming up with a shopping list of what you're going to need to whip each person's closet into shape. Here are a few tips.

• Closet organizers massively increase the amount of usable closet space by allowing garments to be hung above and below one another -- and, what's more -- they can be customized to meet each child's unique storage needs. So plan to invest in a good quality closet organizer.
• Stackable clear plastic bins with snap-on lids are ideal for storing toys and art supplies because they allow your child to see what's inside each container. Hint: If you assign each child a set of containers with a different color of lid, toys that "migrate" to other parts of the house can easily be returned to the room of the rightful owner.
• If your child has a huge collection of building blocks or art supplies cluttering her closet, you might want to store those materials in a fishing tackle box or a tool box.
• Hanging shoe bags can be used to hold slippers, baseball hats, and other assorted paraphernalia -- anything to get these items off the floor of your child's closet.
• Shoe racks can be used to tame the shoe collection of a pint-sized shoe diva or to hold the stuffed animal collection of a veterinarian-in-training.

Family movie night
Saturday night
7:00 p.m.

Your mission for Saturday night is simple: Get all the extra stuff out of each child's room so that they'll be able to find their beds again! Stuff that is destined for a sibling's room should be shuttled off to its destination immediately, while things that are going to be exiled forever should be dragged to the TV room for a final round of sorting.

Your final task for the evening? Watching a video together while everyone sorts through the mountain of stuff on the floor. By the end of the movie, you should have five smaller piles on the family room floor, sorted according to ultimate fate:

1. To give away
2. To donate to charity
3. To sell
4. To recycle
5. To throw in the trash

Click here for Steps 7-10 to getting organized >>