Involving children in tidying their room

Tidying up children’s room has always been a difficult task for mothers, especially when they are younger children. Right from the living room to their room, children litter the house with toys, study materials, clothing and food, thereby leaving mothers frustrated after a hard day’s work. The blogger of Joyinthehome.com, Dollie Freeman, states that training […]

Tidying up children’s room has always been a difficult task for mothers, especially when they are younger children. Right from the living room to their room, children litter the house with toys, study materials, clothing and food, thereby leaving mothers frustrated after a hard day’s work.

The blogger of Joyinthehome.com, Dollie Freeman, states that training starts best when a toddler starts to walk, since it naturally thinks it is play. Freeman adds that parents should teach their children how to keep their room clean, but that it may be hard to know where to start from, especially if you think your children are too young. Younger children can easily learn how to pick their toys on their own with early training.

Teaching children how to properly tidy up their room will help put room disasters under control.

Five tips on how to keep children’s room clean

·Everything in its place: It is imperative that you start the teaching by giving everything in their room a place that it belongs. Get them a drawer to organise their toys; it will help in keeping like things together in one drawer. Once everything is in its place, a child will be able to understand where something belongs and can be one step closer to keeping their room clean.

·Put things back when you are done with them: Let the children know that they must return everything back to where they brought them out from.

·Start a morning routine: “As your morning goes, so does the rest of your day.” We all know this saying, and it works with teaching children to keep their room clean. Create a set of routine for the morning, which includes making their bed as early as age two, and by four or five years they can do it on their own. Put dirty clothes in the laundry basket and open their curtains and blinds.

·Implement cleanup time before dinner: Remind them to tidy up before coming to table for dinner. They may not go back to their room until bedtime. Therefore, we wouldn’t want to take that time to clean up because we want them to go to bed at the right time. Give them a 30 minutes prior to dinner to tidy up their room and then they can help set the table for dinner. If we miss this we will really regret it.

·Tidy up once a week together: Once a week, go into your children’s room and tidy up with them. Re-emphasise the need to put things in their rightful places if you still find them where they do not belong.