Children can be mucky, messy little tykes, and trying to keep a clean and tidy home with them around, is a feat that many of us simply resign ourselves to never achieving. Spring turns into summer cleaning, which quickly becomes fall cleaning and before you know it the festive season is upon you and the house still hasn’t been cleaned from top to bottom!
What if you actually got your kids to pitch in and help you clean, though? While your first instinct might be to recoil in horror at the thought of your little darlings trying to ‘help’ mommy or daddy with the cleaning, with clear instructions and a reward system, it might not be such a bad idea.
How can I get my kids to clean, without me having to clean up after them?
While it’s regrettable that some cleaning jobs may involve your kids making more of a mess than that which they were trying to clean, there are plenty of other ways of getting them to help with the housework, while not actually being a hindrance to you:
- Putting toys away after play
Encouraging your kids to put their toys or games away as soon as they have finished with them, will definitely help to keep your home tidy, if not clean. Large containers big enough to fit the items in, will make life much easier for you and the kids, and they can simply throw them into the box when they’re done.
If it gets to the point where the kids play items no longer fit into the container, then it might be time to sort through them before they start cluttering up your home. Get them to choose their favourites, and then the rest can be sold at a yard sale or donated to charity.
- Label containers so that they know what goes where
Littler ones may not fully understand which particular toys, games or household items are supposed to be stored where, so if you can attach a small picture diagram or bold word description of each object to the place where you want it to go, this may help. They will soon remember which items go where, and then you can remove the pictures.
- Teaching them to feel proud of their cleaning achievements
Kids of all ages enjoy being rewarded for good behaviour, and helping with the cleaning chores is no different. Make them understand that they will only be praised if they complete the chores to the standard that you have set out for them, while remembering that the standards may need to be lowered slightly, the younger your kids are. Should your child not be able to complete the task correctly – and for whatever reason – then quickly allocate them another chore and ensure that they are able to complete it to the best of their ability. Insisting that they strive to complete a task that they’re unable to, will only reinforce their sense of failure.
You might even want to create a chore chart that you can put up on the wall, and when each task is ticked off, they might be rewarded with points or a gold star; this may not work on teenagers, but it’s usually a good method for your littler ones!
- Don’t overwhelm them with instructions
Younger kids will have a hard time processing complicated or lengthy instructions for cleaning or tidying up, so give simple and clear orders that they can easily follow and one instruction at a time, to avoid any confusion.