Eco Kids: Declutter & Recycle

Sara Whatley kicks off the new Eco Kids column with a look at recycling and some kid-friendly bedroom decluttering ideas 

Learning about the importance of recycling when young will hopefully create children who grow up to be enthusiastic recyclers themselves. A great way to get children engaged in recycling is to be theirrole model – let them see you make conscious choices when it comes to what you buy, how much you consume and how you recycle. Then you can reduce, reuse and recycle together! 

Understanding how recycling works may help children connect to the process and encourage them to become better recyclers themselves. It’s quite magical to realise that your rubbish can be turned into something else, and fun to try it yourself too. 

One area that children can really take responsibility for is their owntoys and bedrooms. It is amazing how quickly things build up until you can hardly get in the door! With all the new spoils of Christmas this is the perfect time of year to have a good declutter, making more space to play and enjoy what they do have. 

Unfortunately, to do this the mess gets worse before it gets better... a great place to start a bedroom declutter is by getting it all out – chaos! But once it is all out you can help your children to sort everything into piles of like-for-like, for example soft teddies, Lego, fidgets, beauty products, stationary. This allows you to see exactly what you have and how much of it. 

Next, it’s decision time. Go through each pile with your child and sort into keep, rehome, or recycle (where possible). Eventually you should have much smaller piles of stuff to keep and lots of things to rehome and move on. 

Clean, reusable toys can be donated to charities, toy banks, hospitals, schools, and other organisations. Many broken or unusable toys can be recycled – check your local recycling centre to see what they accept, but often they have bins for wood, plastics, bikes and scooters, and a general waste as well. There are also specific toy collections, such as Mattel’s PlayBack, which collects old Barbies to make into new ones. 

To maintain your hard work, keep toys organised with easy to see, easyto access, and easy to put away storage solutions. Vertical systems help to keep the floor clear, and underbed storage boxes are ideal for homing less played with toys or for a toy rotation.

When it comes to tiding away, it helps if children know where everything lives – labels are your friend. And if you are meeting resistance, try doing it together while emphasising the organised system by saying something like, ‘Would you like to tidy the cars or the pencils?’ Good luck!