Little Helping Hands Wanted
5 Smart Ways to get your Kids to help Cleaning
When you have kids, your home can easily get messy in a matter of hours. Many parents find themselves constantly doing one chore after another in an effort to keep the home tidy and sanitary on a daily basis. However, you do not need to tackle all household chores on your own. Kids can and should take some responsibility for their own messes, and they should learn how to clean, vacuum, dust and more at a relatively young age. Follow these great tips to motivate your kids to help with the household chores.
1. Incorporate Chores into Daily Routine
If your home is like many family homes, you may have a fairly structured routine that you follow each day. For example, you may get the kids up at a certain time, assist them with breakfast and get dressed, take them to school and more. You likewise may have a set routine for the afternoon and evening hours. A smart idea is to incorporate a daily or weekly chore list into this routine. For example, get the kids to load their own dishes into the dishwasher after they eat, and ask them to feed the dog and make their bed in the morning.
2. Create Your own Chore Chart
In many homes with kids, the messes can seem non-stop. You may have pet hair on the floor, backpacks or luggage lying around, empty glasses sitting on the coffee table and more. Make a list of everything that you need doing on a daily basis. Determine which chores are suitable for each child based on their age and abilities. For example, it is not suitable to ask a three-year-old to handle dangerous cleaning products, but cleaning the toilet or bathroom are easy jobs for a 15 year old teenager. Then, create your own chore chart so that everyone knows exactly what they are supposed to do each day. You may consider rotating out the chores so that each child feels that the division of labor is fair.
3. Ask the Kids to Clean up their own Space
One task that you should always ask your ‘little helping hands’ to do is to clean up their own messes. Their mess is likely largely contained in their bedroom or a playroom, but it may overflow into the living room from time to time. Kids should always pick up their toys, art projects, homework and more on a regular basis. Stress the importance of having a clean room to your child, including aspects such as safety and hygiene.
4. Give the Kids Options
Nobody likes to be constantly dictated to, and kids may easily feel as though your requests for them to do chores border on nagging. You can overcome this by giving your kids a few options. For example, they can unload the dishwasher after dinner or take the trash out. On the weekends, they can vacuum the upstairs area or clean the kitchen floor. You can even work this into your life as a source of motivation. For example, the child who eats all of their vegetables first at dinner gets first pick at the chores.
5. Thank and Reward the Kids
Kids thrive on praise from their parents. A simple word of thanks and a comment about how great their room looks now that it is cleaned and organized can go a long way toward motivating them to clean their room again in the future without hassle or drama. You can even talk about having a family reward once the house is cleaned. For example, after everyone gets their room clean, you can all head to a local park to take the dog for a walk.
A messy house can be an embarrassing eyesore, and you may shy away from having house guests come over when your home is in disarray. It can also be unsafe and unhealthy for your family to live in, in some cases. You simply must take regular steps to keep your home clean, but you do not need to do this on your own. It is wise and even beneficial for your kids to ask them to take responsibility for their fair share of the mess. When you incorporate these tips into your life, you may find that kids are more willing and even eager to get started cleaning up their spaces.
How do you handle the situation at home? Do your children help you with the cleaning?
Thank you very much for reading!
Our kids are 5 and 3. We are starting to give the 5 year old more responsibilities. It seems to come more naturally to our 3 year old to help out!
The little ones learn from the “big sister/brother” and copy them, don’t they. How convenient 😉 I think, it is a good thing to start giving kids responsibilities, the children usually even love it to be an ‘important’ part of the team, don’t they? Thanks a lot for coming over, Stacey 🙂
This is such a great reminder. Mine are big enough to do most of the chores… It’s the battle of the everyday “stuff” around the house that makes me crazy!
I soooo need to do this more. I’m constantly cleaning and it gets so old, especially when there’s no little hands helping! Plus the future wives of my boys will be forever grateful if they are already trained lol!
Hi Beth, yeeeeees! Do it for your future daughters in law, I know what I am talking about!! LOL We always had to do our little tasks at home, my 2 brothers as much as I as the only girl and none of us has remained with any physical damages, we got rewarded for extra jobs, such as washing daddy’s car. Thank you for coming over 🙂