Keeping Your Child’s Room Clean & Organized
Your child’s room resembles a battlefield? Yeah, that’s a common problem for many parents. No matter how hard you try to instill some sense of responsibility in your child, the results are always the same. Children clean their rooms one day and on the next, they’ve become just as messy.
It’s understandable, since the younger a child is, the less he or she cares about order and cleanliness. Fortunately, this changes with age but for now, put these simple recommendations to test and see how they work in your home.
Teach your kid how to clean and maintain their own space
No one is born with an instilled sense of hygiene and order, so the sooner you teach the child to maintain their own living space, the better.
Keep in mind shouting, grounding and quarrels won’t do the trick and are likely to have a reverse effect.
Begin by setting a good example. Keep your home in order and allow the child to observe while you’re cleaning or tidying up.
Better yet, have them join in the chore, and “help you” with cleaning. Even the youngest of kids will enjoy dusting like mommy!
Then you can proceed by helping him or her to clean and tidy their own room. Together you can pick up toys from the floor, collect dirty laundry from furniture, dust, vacuum.
Soon the child will see the benefits of keeping their room neat and will begin to take pride in the results.
Make room
Even if the room is relatively clean, clutter and chaos will ruin everything, so make sure you teach the child not to hoard useless stuff.
On the weekend ask the little one to assist you in collecting everything they don’t intend to use, including items which no longer serve their purpose. Then dispose of them to make room for more important and useful things.
Establish the rule that for every item that goes in the room, another one needs to come out. Old clothes that no longer fit as well as toys should be collected and donated to charity to make room for the new ones. This will also instill compassion and generosity in the child.
There is a place for everything
The child’s belongings should be restricted to his or her room or the designated spaces only. Which means no toys, no clothes, no books strewn on the kitchen table or on the living room sofa.
What’s more, these items should not merely be contained to the kids’ room, they should be organized according to the purpose they serve. Teaching your child young that everything has a place will only help you in the long run!
Labeled containers
Consider buying containers and labeling them, since this will help your child to return each item to its rightful place. Imagine, no more socks and Barbie dolls under the bed!
If the child has way too many possessions, the containers probably won’t do, though.
There are more spacious bins and baskets for large amounts of child “treasures”. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s easily accessible to the child. Keep similar items together – dolls in one container, Legos and puzzles (in their boxes!) in another – everything will be much easier to find this way.
Teaching your children young to keep their room clean will be a blessing to the whole family, and will build confidence and maturity for their life ahead! Happy cleaning!
This guest post is contributed by Edna Thomson, owner of TenancyCleaners Muswell Hill
How do you help your children learn the art of cleaning and organization?
