Having kids and having a tidy house can sometimes feel like two mutually exclusive concepts. Whilst you invariably have to accept a certain amount of chaos, and it’s not worth losing sleep over. There are some things that you can introduce to try and keep your home as tidy as possible whilst your little ones are growing up.
In this post, we offer three suggestions to get you started.
Have Kids Assist with the Chores
The key to success here is to establish what works for your family. Try and make it fun for kids to help. This is so they don’t see it as a punishment or even necessarily a chore. Instead, they see it as just part of their routine. Obviously it’s a little more difficult when your kids are small. But, getting them to tidy up from a young age will help set a good example for their later years.
Start with getting them to help you tidy up their toys after they’ve played. Then as they get older, you can move on to getting them to keep their room tidy and putting their toys away themselves.
Not only does this make less work for you, it means that if you have any external help with your cleaning, your home will actually be tidy enough for them to get round with the hoover without accidentally sucking up any bits of Lego.
Make Tidying into a Game
Most kids love to play games, and tidying can easily be made into one. The most important thing is to make it fun!
Try creating a party atmosphere for them by choosing a specific song which becomes ‘the cleaning song’ – it needs to be something that gets you all moving and dancing about. Letting them know it’s time to tidy and then turning this song on is a great way to create a routine. Hopefully your kids enjoy dancing as they put their toys away.
If they’re more singers than dancers, find a song that they can sing to whilst they tidy instead. The song can also be used as a timer if you want them to clean up within a certain time limit.
For those children who like to have a challenge, you can reward them for actively cleaning up their toys with a sticker chart. Perhaps you can also set a reward when they collect a certain amount of stickers?
Make Personalized Spaces for their Things
One way to get kids interested in tidying is by creating specific boxes for their toys. If they’re old enough to choose, get them to help pick these out and decorate them. This is so that they feel like it’s their special storage for their things. There are plenty of different storage options depending on the space you have – from boxes to baskets. For those who love order, good storage and labeling is a thing of beauty.Â
Not only does having a place for everything make tidying easier, it might also help when your child is demanding a specific toy that you suddenly can’t find.