Teaching Your Kids How To Help Keep The House Clean

When you have children you, as their parents, are the ones that will need to teach them all about life. Part of life is keeping your home clean. It’s not about having children to do the chores for you, it’s about teaching them things that they will need to know to survive adulthood.

Not only do they learn why it’s important to keep a home clean (health, and it’s easier to find things in a clean and organized home), but they also learn responsibility and how to follow instructions.

Keep A List

Lists are important when it comes to cleaning your home, whether it’s a list for you or for the kids. Lists can help you make sure you don’t forget anything, and when it comes to cleaning the house there are a million things to forget.

Your list should include what needs to be done in each and every room, from dusting to doing the dishes.

Schedule Chores

In order to keep track of what needs to be done each day and who’s doing what, it helps to schedule the chores. This way everyone knows their purpose. As parents, you should also be on that schedule. And, to be fair to everyone, change up what each person does each week.

You wouldn’t want the same person being forced to wash the toilet every week, and sometimes you just need a break from doing dishes.

Organize

Teach your children to do more than clean up the trash and scrub the dishes. They also need to know how to keep a home organized. One way to help them really learn organizational skills is to have them go through their own items at the end of each year and determine items they can get rid of.

Have them sort trash and donation boxes, teaching them what is good for donating and what isn’t. This way they won’t collect too much stuff and will have room for new items when needs.

Talk To Them

It really helps to talk to your children about why you need their help with cleaning. Explain about dirt, mold, and germs. Show them what it’s like if they don’t ever put things away or do not clean up. Or if they notice some mold growth with the help of a toxic mold test kit and turn a blind eye to it. This can be as easy as watching a show about hoarding with them.

If they know that there are health risks involved in a dirty home then they might be more likely to happily participate in house cleaning chores.

To make it more fun for them, offer something in reward for completing their chores each week, like a sticker or some cash (depending on their age). Sometimes a reward is all it takes to make chores tolerable.