Room cleaning procedure; help your child learn some practical ways to clean his room. This can also motivate him to have better organizational habits.
Cleaning his room can be a daunting task for a child at any age. For the more perfectionistic types it presents something that they desire to do. However, for most of the other types(which seem to be the majority) it presents a challenge.
These helpful hints and ideas might be the catalyst to motivate your child into serious room cleaning!
The first thing to do is to make a list of the things that need done in the room. There are different ways to accomplish this. The list could be numbered according to each item that needs done.
An example of this would be:
1)Pick up clothes from floor
2)Put clothes away
3)Pick up toys and put in their proper places
4)Pick up trash from floor
5)Put all books,cds,sports cards,magazines,sandals, shoes,etc.,where they belong
6)Take broom--check for cobwebs(this applies to older children)
7)Vacuum floor/dust dressers(also applies to older children)
8)Make sure everything is off of the bed
9)Make bed
10)Empty trash in proper receptacle
11)Look around your room. Is everything neat and clean? If not, finish what is left.
Another method that could be used is this:
Instead of looking at the whole messy room and being discouraged, take one section at a time.
For instance, take a corner area. Separate toys, clothes, trash, books, etc., into different piles until it looks neat(for the most part).
Next, go to another section of the room. Bring the toys, clothes, etc., to the previous piles. Continue this throughout the room until there is one pile for each particular item. THEN put the various things away--vacuum, dust, and make the bed--voila! You should have a clean room.
Some other helpful things to tell your children about cleaning in general would be:
1)When you walk through a room and you see something out of place that no one is using, put it away.
2)If you are cleaning one room and certain items belong in another room just pile them up together until you are finished.Work your way from room to room doing that and when you get to the last room everything should be in its proper place. This saves a lot of time rather than taking one item to a room and ten minutes later another one to the same room.
Cleaning a room in some kind of systematic way is much easier than the hit and miss style. It gives a good feeling of accomplishment and hopefully instills within your child a better sense of the benefits of being at least somewhat organized.
Some things that could help smaller children with their cleaning would be to put stickers on the outside of plastic tubs with pictures of various articles. Each tub would have a picture of the items located in that particular tub. This would be especially effective in a toy room or their own bedroom. Pictures can be cut out of older magazines (or drawn if you are artistic). They could come from color books or picture books that are no longer used.
Working together with your younger children to direct them in cleaning their rooms can be a bonding and fun time. Hopefully what you start when they are young will be retained and used as they grow older. At least the memories will still be there!
