Beyond the usual eight to 10 hours when the children are firmly tucked away in bed, and you’ve slogged for a couple of hours to tidy up toys and scrub of strange things from surfaces, walls and tables that you can’t imagine the ingredients of, it is possible to keep your home clean with the kids around…if you have a plan!
Here are some tips to keep on top of the mess and stay sane:
1. Slog alone and tidy alone for life!
Mess in the home is not created by you alone, so it takes a joint effort to get things clean again.Get everyone involved in the housework from day one and you’ll start to cultivate a culture of cleanliness.
Everything from tidying up toys to sprucing up rugs with carpet cleaning shampoo can be done by children if you teach them. But if you want to play the martyr, you’ll be slogging for life, so start while they’re young and it will make cleaning seem effortless.
2. Give everything a home
Children like to have boundaries and know where things belong. So, give everything in your home a place to live – toys can live in a box in one room in the home other than their bedrooms, for example, remote controls can live in a caddy, or just by the TV. If you’re faced with a bit of rebellion, you can make a family rule that no new toys come out unless the others are put away first.
3. Lead by example
If you want your children to put their shoes away when they come home from school, don’t dump yours by the staircase when you come home – even if those stilettos are killing your feet! Make sure your better half follows the rules, too – you have to stand together as a team, otherwise all the efforts of one parent will be wasted.
4. Rewards go a long way
This doesn’t have to be money, or toys – it could mean an extra book at bedtime, an extra 10 minutes watching their favourite channel before bedtime.
If you want to go all out, you can make a reward chart for every day that your child have tidied up well, and after say 5 consecutive days, they get rewarded with something that you mutually agree on before – an ice cream, a trip to the park etc.
Whatever you do, remain diligent – constituency is key to keeping your home clean…
