“Just a bit of household, not much!” We can’t deny that kids are messy. They just are. However, it’s time for you to teach your children to clean up their messes. The sooner you introduce your child to household tasks, the sooner they will learn to take responsibility and make decisions confidently. Instead of yelling at your kids, or doing all the cleaning by your own, Helpling team presents these quick tricks to get your kids to clean up after themselves.
First, understanding:
Pushing your kids to do the cleaning without explaining them the importance and the reasons of it won’t help. Everything starts with a clear understanding of the task in hand. Take the time to explain to your kids their responsibility towards the household as well as the importance of taking caring of their things. Try pointing out how exhausting and tiring it feels to have a room unclean, or an untidy bed and even a lost shoe. Emphasize on the values of cleaning, tidying up, and taking care of one’s personal space, room and items. If they are too young to understand it, try and motivate them in another way, offering them incentives maybe? Depending on your kids, there are many number of things that light a fire under children. Perhaps, candies, chocolate or an extra allowance!
The biggest role model? You!
Kids, especially at a very young age, learn mostly through observation and imitation. Therefore, it is crucial as a parent to set the example of the habits you want to infuse. Make your bed every morning, place your laundry away when it comes out of the dryer, not days later. Model good behavior and demonstrate to your children how to clean properly after a big mess! How would your child learn the best way to keep the space clean if the table is never clean after diner or if there is a plenty of dirty items hanging around in the hallway? Your daily habits and activities will certainly influence your children actions. Moreover, it’s easier to do the cleaning together than by yourself. Children won’t admit it, but in the end, they are proud helping the grown-ups to clean the flat or room. Set the example of the habits you want to instill. Put your laundry away when it comes out of the dryer, not days later.
Easy and step-by-step tasks
Try not to assign complicated and hard tasks for your kids! Give your children age-appropriate tasks! Toddlers can help you arranging your socks, children would like to organize the items by colors or patterns. When your kids reach an older age, encourage them to make their bed every morning or cleaning the dust on their desk. Let them contribute to the household weekly activities by taking them to your next trip to the grocery shopping. Involve them into the decision-making by allowing them to suggest new recipes for dinner!
A spacious room for their toys!
Teaching how to organize oneself should begin in your kids’ room. Make sure that your children room has enough space for the storage of the toys and boxes. This will allow them to arrange their things easily and quickly. At least, their toys won’t be hanging around the room and the dolls would have a place to sleep at night. Make sure to purchase easy-to-carry boxes; after all your children are still too young to carry, lift or move big and heavy boxes from the shelves. Similarly to kindergarten, you can also assign a theme for each corner of the room. For instance, reading and cozy corner, a dress up area and the middle can be the playground!
Communicate well!
Every child needs order and structure to learn. Rather than simply asking them to organize their toys in order, try applying their way of thinking and solving things. Attract their attention, by coming up with some stories like “Let’s clean Teddy’s room”. By doing so, your kids will be more likely to remember the place of the toys and will lay the stuffed animal in the right place. “Please clean up!” These words have no effect, you may want to refine your request by saying: “Please change the CDs back into the shelf and put the teddy to bed now.” Your children must know exactly what to do, so try providing them with more details about the task, for a better and clear understanding of what they’re expected to do. The more concrete your request, the more effective it will be! Rituals help; this tip is important for your children but it can apply for adults too. You can adopt everyday rules like: before dinner, all things needs to be back in place.
Now that we offered you 5 tricks to get your kids to clean up after themselves, follow and apply these to get them part of the cleaning process! We can’t deny that it can be challenging sometimes to keep things neat, clean, and orderly when you’ve got young children at home. If you’re having a hard time to clean your house, we will always have your back! Simply ask for a cleaning service in Dubai and our part time maids will sort out the cleaning!
