How to Help Your Kids Clean Their Rooms
Even grown-ups can feel overwhelmed by a really messy room, so of course a messy room is overwhelming for kids. The best way to approach cleaning your room (or, really, any daunting task) is to break the process into manageable pieces.
Help your kids learn how to break the process of cleaning their room into pieces and they can feel a sense of accomplishment with each task and enlist your help if they need it.
Our publisher, Debra Ross, offers her best strategy for guiding kids to clean their room:
- Put everything that is even vaguely out of place onto the bed. Pile it high, if you must, but confine it to one space. Do this fast.
- Vacuum, dust, spray Windex, everywhere else. That way, you feel like you've accomplished something real in just 5 minutes.
- Categorize what is on the bed into stuff that stays in the room, stuff that leaves the room, and trash. Toss trash into a trash bag, and put the stuff that needs to leave the room outside the door where you can't see it. Keep breaking the remaining pile into smaller bits until the room is done.
- Then tackle the stuff outside the room, and put the trash in the bin. You're done!
How do you maintain that nice, clean room? Our strategic content editor, Katie Beltramo, offers up these strategies:
- Incorporate a mini-clean up in your daily routine. You might spend three or four minutes picking up toys after brushing teeth and before bedtime stories.
- Have a designated spot for kids to put items that they've outgrown, like toys and or clothes, so that you can pass them down or donate to others.
- Notice and praise any efforts your kids make to tidy up without any prompting for you.
When kids learn to clean and maintain their personal space, they'll have gained a valuable life skill. Yes, it's often easier pick all the dang toys up yourself, but guiding your children through the process from an early age will help everyone in the long run.
(c) 2018