Teach Your Kid How To Clean Their Room
12 November 2014
Cleaning their room is one of the most unpopular chores for children. Unless you have OCD or find cleaning therapeutic, chances are that you don’t enjoy it as much as well. How can you then get the kids to participate in home cleaning without making it seem like a task for them? Here are some ways to help kids enjoy the basic routine of cleaning their room. How to make the house cleaning enjoyable?• Make it seem like they are on a mission. Equip your child with the basic domestic supplies like a duster, mop, vacuum cleaner and surface cleaners and tell them these shall be their weapons.• Give them tasks or goals to complete within time limits and according to certain rules, like you can only clean clockwise in the room, or you can’t return to an area you have already cleaned.• Let them pick the music to which they can enjoy working to. This will help them to take their mind off the mundane task.• If you have more than one kid, make it into a competition and ask them to win points on basis of their performance. Have some reward for them if they complete the chore satisfactorily.• Encourage them to treat tasks like cleaning windows and sweeping floors as martial arts training like in the Karate Kid movies.Steps to cleaning the room• The first step to clean their room is to organize their stuff. Ask them to keep their toys and shoes back in their place, put the dirty laundry in the basket and organize their study table. Remove their bed sheets and pillow covers and put them along with the dirty laundry. Then collect the trash in the room and throw it away.• Give them a duster or a piece of cloth and ask them to dust all the surfaces in the room, including the furniture, desk, shelves, nightstands, pictures on the walls, trophies etc. • If the windows are not very dirty, ask them to wipe it with a cleaning solution of vinegar, dishwashing liquid and water. Scrub the surface with a sponge and wipe it dry with a clean, dry cloth or paper. • When they are done with everything, show them how to use the vacuum and its various attachments and let them clean the floor. Make sure they reach behind and under the furniture and in corners where dust collects. If they are too young to use a vacuum, show them how to sweep the floor and shake the dust out of the rug outside in the lawn.• When they are done cleaning the room, teach them to fold and put away their clean laundry in the closet and put new sheets on their bed and pillows. • End the task by assessing their work, helping them realize what they missed out or could have done better and then rewarding them for completing the chore. As they are children, you cannot expect them to produce results similar to professional cleaners. If the room needs more attention, like if the walls are dirty or there are stains on the carpet, you will need an adult to handle these problems. But learning to clean one’s own room is an essential life skill and children must be taught this at a very young age if they are to enjoy independent and tidy living environs as an adult. Explaining why cleanliness is important and why they follow the procedures that you do will help them become more enthusiastic towards the cause.
