Organizing an ASD's world...

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I'll get right down to it. I am a caretaker for 5 children, all in the same family, who are aged 7-14 and all are somewhere on the spectrum. The parents are very open to new ideas and whatnot and I am great at organizing, so between the three of us (well, really just the mom and me lol) we are hoping to get things organized. As it is now, there's lots of open space in the house. Not a lot of furniture, etc. and basically no shelving/buckets/cabinets. Ultimately, I would like to organize their toys, have special places for their papers (they draw and write on papers constantly) and be able to organize anything I can possibly think of...school supplies, craft supplies, yada yada.

Here's the thing though...these kids are GREAT kids and I love working with them but since things have been so out of sorts for so long, they are somewhat used to disorganization, so nothing will ever stay in the place it belongs. Ever. The house is not messy at all, so I don't imagine it would be that hard...we'll just be putting things in bins or whatever instead of on the floor or in some random kitchen drawer lol. The issue is that most of them are likely to just get into the stuff, and leave it lying about everywhere when they're done. Of course, they can help me put the stuff back in, but it would be better if there was some sort of lockable solution for more important/expensive things. Being that they are a large family, it would be great if you had ideas that are cost effective!

I also would like to create some individual spaces for the kids. They are wonderful about sharing everything, which is really fabulous, but as they get older, I imagine they will want a bit of individual things. There's not a lot of space for an actual "space" but I was thinking some sort of station or something where they can put their stuff in "their" drawer, on "their" hook, etc. Not that much wall space so I'm having to rethink how to do it.

If you have any other ideas for organizing stuff or questions that will help you, please let me know! I am married to a man with Aspergers, and am very passionate about learning about Autism, so this job is right up my alley. I love the job and the kids are just so sweet and so wonderful. They are always happy to see me...and I love going to my job. I am very blessed!

I find that the Rubbermaid and Sterlite clear bins of sizes 15 quart and 27 quart work well both for my financial and IEP papers, and for my preschooler's toys. I put the bins on bookshelves or wire shelves. They have rotating handles that lock the lids in place, they're easy to get into, but also provide that sense of things being closed. You could easily designate a bin for each kid's papers.

For my 7 yo's legos, I have a number of large plastic serving trays, like you would use to eat breakfast in bed, and each ongoing project gets a tray and a bunch of small-ish plastic tubs (which originally held 1 lb of Trader Joe's cat cookies) to hold the loose legos. We're using a TV stand to display the completed projects because bookshelves tended to be too narrow. Some smaller sets fit well in the larger disposable food storage tubs (without lid).

I have a basket for DS's shoes, and a 18 quart bin (no lid) for the girls' shoes. It tends to always be overflowing, though, so I need to cut back on the number of shoes and rethink how they are stored.

The kids are all old enough that you should involve them in designing the system. You will definitely have to keep after them to maintain it once it is in place. Perhaps get the kids to watch one of those Clean Sweep type TV shows where they clear out all the clutter and organize a room for inspiration.

If you have an Ikea nearby, I'd recommend a trip to there. They have a huge range of storage cupboards, bins, baskets, etc.

My daughter's room is full of storage units, but we have a problem. She has a weird hobby: placing things in containers that they don't belong in. Go into a sports bag and you'll find a teddy, in a domino box you'll find a rubber frog and the dominos are in the Polly Pocket box. She's not untidy, just stuffing toys anywhere, they're deliberately being put in these places - something to do with her very active imagination, I think.

Kids on the spectrum, even disorganized ones like mine, usually love to sort things - it's just that their idea of sorting may not be the same as your idea of sorting.

For DS, we finally broke through the room-cleaning issue (for the record, I was perfectly willing to leave his room messy, but it clearly stresses him out.) by labeling all the bins and drawers. I used chalkboard paint on his dresser drawers so we have some flexibility.

Since these kids sound like they're too little to read, you may have to use pictures. It may be easiest to fill the bins and then take a picture of the bins with their contents so they get the idea (keeping in mind that you will have to help them generalize; if you fill a bin with cars and take a picture, they may fight you on putting the truck in there if it wasn't in the picture and you don't tell them it belongs and how.) Then take a picture of the room looking the way you want it to look, print it out, and put it on the door.

Help them find a step-by-step process to clean. DS likes to clean up by sorting: all the laundry first, then all the paper, then all the legos, etc. I like to clean by dividing up the space: I start in one corner and slowly move around the room. We also remind DS to check the "edges," the places around the floorboards and near the bottom of furniture where little toys collect.

For toy storage, when DS was small we just used laundry baskets: they stack (sometimes even with stuff in them!) they're easy to pull out when you need them, easy to fill and easy to carry. These stop working once you have little toys like Legos or Littlest Pet Shop, but they are cheap and easy in the meantime. You can take this idea farther and build a "laundry basket dresser" http://ana-white.com/2010/11/laundry-basket-dresser

IKEA was a good suggestion - we still use some of the TROFAST bins for elementary and preschool toys we are keeping (like trains) although I thought the shelving they go with was expensive for what it was (you can buy their brackets so they will slide into existing cabinets like a drawer, just measure carefully.)

We don't have an IKEA nearby I'm sad, because I would probably...well, spend my life's savings in there...LOL

The kids actually all do read and write, except one I think. There are 7yo twin boys, a 9 year old boy, an 11 year old boy and a 14yo girl. One of the twins is more severe than the other, but I'm pretty sure he can read. He spends most of his time on the computer when he's not at school and he plays this game called Roblox. They love legos and just got a TON of them as a gift from someone. So I've separated them into the only bins that the family has, and I've put all the toys in their big back room which I am turning into a designated play room. Or attempting to turn it into a play room lol.

Anyway, pictures is a great idea too...and I will definitely put them into use when I get around to being able to get the bins/cabinets/whatever. The idea behind locking them is so that they would have to get permission to get something so they're only using one or two things at a time...whereas they're likely to get as many things out as they want and play with them all little bit here, little bit there. However, the dog can get a hold of the stuffed animals and other stuff, and other kids can get ahold of stuff and stuff gets thrown under beds, couches, desks, whatever and while that is a normal part of having children, we'd like to reduce just how much goes under the furniture

I like the idea of the bins with rotating handles that lock. That would be a good compromise.

Lots to think about...thanks for your suggestions! It will be a while before they're able to get the bins and stuff, but I'm hoping to have a good sort of plan worked out ahead of time so that we know what we're getting when we're ready!

I would offer a note of caution.

While I never really realized this is probably because I am somewhere on the spectrum, I always thought of myself as a Hare vs a Tortoise. I used to say I wanted to re-write that fable and show that they both crossed the finish line at the same time. I don't do slow and steady: I work at breakneck speed with 100% of my attention, and then walk completely away for a while. It's how I am wired, and it can be just as successful a strategy as slow and steady. Specific to cleaning up: I find it exhausting to "keep things clean" and "keep track of the little things." It doesn't work for me, I get frustrated and just stop doing it. I am far better off allowing myself to make a big mess and clean it up once, or having specific places designated for using specific things, so I don't make a mess in the first place.

I'd suggest strongly that you try to figure out and to work with the kids natural way of doing things, rather than trying to impose your way. I find that applying NT thinking in solving a problem is a bad habit of many people who work with ADHD and/or spectrum kids.

Your goal is to get them organized, right? Maybe you need to think outside the box a bit. For instance, your idea about locked boxes - I know that if I had to break my concentration while I was in the middle of something to ask permission, I would be constantly frustrated - and as a kid, I'd probably melt down a lot. Remember that the main deficit of autism is communication, and this method requires communication - if communicating is your goal, great - but then you have to be prepared to give up on organization. One goal at a time.

Rather than locking bins or only taking out a few things, why not schedule periodic cleanups into their routine? Create a visual schedule of the day, and add 2-3 cleanups into it, one just before bedtime so they start the day with a tidy room. Remind them occasionally that the fewer things they take out, the less cleanup they will have to do - and make sure to highlight the quicker cleanups when they happen.

If the kids' things are being damaged, they need rules about those specific things, for instance - no stuffed animals on the floor or in the rooms/places where the dog is allowed. (or perhaps a no-dog area is a good idea.) It would be easier for me to remember to keep stuffed animals on my bed than it would be to "put them away when I am done." (that is an extremely, extremely ambiguous phrase to AS kids and probably to all kids. How do you know when you're done?)

Ikea kind of overpriced. I went there to get stuff to organize my kids room and ended up going to target instead. I buy the cube system stuff and it works well. Our biggest issue is getting rid of old toys. dd5 won't have it. I have to do it when she isn't around, which since I work is never. I literally have to take a half day off to take care of sorting and tossing/donating old toys because she will have a heart attack.

LOL - I tried to do that, but DS has a mental inventory of every little thing and just freaks out when we get home.

Two things on this issue: first, I think a lot of DS's reluctance to get rid of toys is because we were constantly pushing ahead developmentally with toys that were age-appropriate to his chronological age. At 12, he's much more willing to get rid of the preschool toys than he was at age 9. This didn't occur to me until just now when he finally declared himself "too old" for some toys.

Second, we started framing the toy thing this way: old toys have to go away to make room for new toys. I had DS make decisions based on what new toys he wanted. We finally draw a line in the sand and tell him that no new toys were coming in unless some toys went out (we do this at least a month and a half before birthdays or other present-related opportunities.)

Third, part of his issue was that DS invests his toys with little personalities and a life of their own. To address this, we donated them places where he might 'visit' them (YMMV on this one, I could see where for some this would be worse) like his preschool, his school, or the local Y playroom. We would say they wouldn't be lonely there, and they'd be well taken care of. Knowing they went to a good home was important to him, even if they were junky Happy Meal toys.

Thanks for the note of caution. I DO want to work with the kids, but right now they have zero structure when it comes to this kind of thing so I want to (very slowly) introduce a little structure here and there. Do I care if toys are everywhere? No...but I want them to have a place to go and over time, I want the kids to learn too that this is where they go. I am planning on implementing a 10 minute clean up time before bed...they can help me carry toys/stuff to appropriate places at the end of the day. They love to help...just have to ask them. They're great kids so I don't think that part of it will be a problem. We don't want things to be destroyed, such as game controllers, DVDs, games, etc. so we want to lock those sorts of things up simply because they will destroy a lot of things without meaning to. I hope that makes sense. I'm planning on going very slowly and having extremely low expectations...but I'd still like to at least create the space for things to go. Kids are rarely neat anyway so I don't expect them to be neat and clean...but when I'm there, I'd like to be able to help organize things. It would just make it easier on everyone.

And as for getting rid of toys, it's not really a problem, should we have to do that. The kids have toys they are attached to, but we wouldn't need to get rid of those toys. The rest of them, the kids would never miss...lol that's just how they are. They are a lot more accepting of change than some Autistic children are. The parents have done a good job with socializing them and getting them used to change and stuff like that.

Yeah my dd5 doesn't miss them if I get rid of them when she isn't looking, she doesn't have a huge mental inventory and there are VERY few toys she actually plays with and cares about (her legos). The rest she doesn't ACTUALLY care about, not really. I think it's a pretty black and white thing, the toy is HERS. PERIOD. Whether she still plays with it or not. If she sees me go in there and start chucking them, even a puzzle with pieces missing, she goes all nuclear on me. Because it is HERS. PEriod. I can sit there and rationalize getting rid of each toy with her, which does work, but it takes too long. I don't want to talk about each and every one.

I just wanted to clarify that the bins I was talking about don't lock, like with a key. The handles rotate to hold the lids on, and are easier to get on and off than the ones where there is no handle.

If you want the kids to have to ask permission, I'd suggest a closet or area of the garage. That's what I do with my preschoolers, to keep the amount of toys available under control. To get a toy bin from the garage, they have to ask, and I'll say something like, "After you put all the blocks in the bin, we'll get the trains out." Then I put the block bin in the garage and bring the train bin in. I'm not sure this would work as well for elementary and middle school children.