I know for a fact that there are some children out there who are natural cleaners and organizers. They love to clean, and you find them spending hours sorting and organizing their toys according to color or height or whatever. I know this for a fact, because I am related to a few of these children.
However… as far as I can tell, NONE of my children inherited this particular gene. *sigh* In fact, in the case of the girls- being triplets and having to share most things, they each seem to be little hoarders and have private little stashes of items that they’ve taken from around the house. Funny girls. So, I resign myself to the knowledge that cleaning is probably always going to be an uphill battle, and I will always be vastly outnumbered by little people that make mess. I talked about my cleaning schedule HERE and in there I say that I clean the girls’ bedroom each week. Which is TRUE. You might look at the first photo and assume that I haven’t cleaned their room in over a month. But truly, this is how their room ends up almost every week.
I thought that since I have some experience (whether I appreciate that particular experience or not) in cleaning a room each week that appears to be overwhelming, maybe I could show some steps to help make it a little less overwhelming to someone else. Because *maybe* your kids aren’t natural cleaning maniacs either.
These photos are not for the faint of heart… but they are honest.
See what I mean... this is pretty bad. The first step in cleaning a very messy room is to sweep out under all the beds, even if it seems to make the mess even worse. (It will.) But if you clean the mess first and then sweep out the beds, you will have to clean two messes and it takes longer. If you don't have wood floors, that's going to be a bit more difficult. Perhaps you can just use the broom handle to scoop everything out.
Sweep everything into a pile. Again, if you don't have wood floors... well, you should really just get them. It will make your life easier.
Assemble a basket/box/container all around your pile to sort everything out. In the case of the girls' room, we always have a basket for dirty clothes, a toy box, a smaller box for all their play food, a pile or box of items that do not belong in their room, garbage, etc.
Everything is sorted! As the pile gets smaller and smaller, I will continue to sweep everything into the middle. This saves work. Once everything is sorted, put the toys in their spot, remove the baskets of dirty clothes to wash, etc.
Room = Clean! At least for the next 20 minutes anyway. As overwhelming as this looked at first, with this system, it really only took me about 30 minutes of work. I always make the girls help me with sorting and picking up, since it is their mess.
Honestly, as I stated above, this only takes me 30 minutes or so with this system. Every week I dread cleaning their room because it feels overwhelming, but every week I am surprised at really how little time it actually takes to get it picked up.
What I didn’t mention is the *actual* first step is usually taking all the sheets off the beds and throwing them in the wash. After everything is picked up, you can mop the floor if it’s needed or vacuum if you have carpet. You could also clean the windows or whatever other sorts of deep cleaning is needed in the room.
The girls, although they don’t love doing the actual cleaning, love room cleaning day… they love to get fresh sheets on their beds and have a clean room. If anyone has any tips on how to teach them NOT to make such a large mess in their room throughout the week, I’d love to hear them!
My hint for helping them be motivated to clean their room is to have them clean it at a certain time each day. We clean the play room almost everyday at 4 p.m. before my husband comes home from work. I give them a 5 minute warning then set a timer. Once the timer goes off – we tackle the room. Then we do a quick pick up before bed. Any toys left out disappears for a day or two.
I don’t want to make it sound like we are a “perfect” family though. This doesn’t happen everyday but my oldest and I talk about the bigger mess after a few days of not picking up. He’s starting to get it.
Sounds like you have a good system for the big clean ups!
I have 3 kids (7 year old boy with autism, 4 year old girl and 14 month old boy) and none of them has that ultra-clean gene. We clean up twice a day. Once before lunch and once as part of our before bed routine. It doesn’t have to be perfectly clean and spotless, but just put away and manageable! Once a week I try to organize things a bit.
The big thing is that we dont have a lot of toys. All of their toys combined would fill up one and a half laundry baskets. They love everything they have and play with all of it. After birthdays and Christmas we help them pick out some of their old toys to donate to the local food bank. Fewer toys means fewer things for me to step on and less to clean up.
We are *all* trying to get better at putting things away right after we’re done with them. Yep, even me. It’s a work in progress!