1) Streamline the activities that will take place in a particular room. If you can, reassign some activities to other rooms instead.

• Set up activity zones for each of the room’s designated activities.
  
• Create storage within the room’s activity zones for items associated with those activities (i.e. toy storage in the kid zone; a media unit with space for CD’s and Videos in the entertainment zone; a filing cabinet in the home-office zone.)

2) Be ruthless with the purge; 'use it in the room or lose it'. Use the 'one-in one-out' rule: every time you bring something new in, throw something old out. Arrange regular charity pickups (get on their calling list) and keep a donation bag on the go in the basement.

3) Create a Chore Chart with a built in rewards program: Assign tasks to each child in the family and use movable magnetic tokens to signal the completion of a task. Once all tasks in a row have been completed, give the child a small reward.

Tip for Families: Do the Dash, Do the Dinner Dash: Every night before dinner, a parent must insist on doing the 'pre-dinner dash' with the family. Find a set of attractive, easy-to-store baskets, and clearly mark them with the names of each family member. The kids can take turns picking out and playing a favourite song while everyone dashes around the room (or the house) using their basket to collect the possessions that they’ve left out where they don’t belong. Once they’ve gathered their belongings, each person takes their basket to their room and puts their things away. The baskets must always be returned (empty) to the family room before dinner is served. No dash, no dinner. It's a great way to establish a routine and makes cleaning up fun.

This tip is from episode 8, Click to view the Episode Summary