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Health & Fitness

What can I do about my teenager's clothes?

A typical teenager's room might be covered in clothing.  This sometimes gives the impressions that the child has too much clothing, has no room to put the clothing or doesn't care about the clothing.  
As a parent of a teen and through my work with many families, I would have to say that none of those impressions are probably accurate.   
One of the main reasons for clothing being dropped or strewn on the ground is that a teenager's brain is not focused on doing maintenance when the time is right.  This task of putting things away seems inefficient, uninteresting or a poor use of time to him or her.  There's always something better to do, even if it's just sleeping!  Taking care of clothing is much more likely to occur if it is really easy - drop into an open drawer or a bin, or hang on a hook, or place a stack of clean laundry on a shelf, chair or open surface - if available!  The floor is usually the most accessible open surface - no wonder that is where the clothes end up!
I recently worked on the bedroom of a high school girl, whose mother was worried that she had too many clothes.  There was no dresser to hold the clothes - instead everything was stored on shelves and hangers.  It was a terrific approach to making it really easy for the user to see where things were and to put away laundry without having to open drawers or doors.
When everything was put away, the shelves looked really full.  Our solution was to move seasonal clothing to a top shelf or other storage place, add wall hooks for belts and scarves, and hang everything that was appropriate within the available clothes rod space.  We then set about reviewing each category of clothing, first for fit, then for condition, then for "Do I wear it?", then for quantity.  For example, the stack of t-shirts was determined to have several that would never be worn but were kept for memories - these when into a memento bin.  Some were stained and when to the rag bin.  Some weren't t-shirts at all and went to the right pile.  At that point, the remaining t-shirts were determined to be used frequently enough, desired and fit within the allotted space. Next!
Teens are usually happy to have some help working on their room.  It makes the task much more enjoyable and gets them through to the end quicker than they would do on their own. The biggest challenge is whether they will accept a parent to be that helper!  

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