Is Keeping Your Kids’ Rooms Clean a Battle? A Few Strategies That Can Help
Please clean your room! If that’s the battle cry in your home, you’re not alone. Since kids have had their own room, parents around the world have struggled to help them keep it clean. Maybe it’s time for a few new strategies and an efficient, new closet system to make everyone’s life a whole lot easier.
Here and some ideas to help bring order into what’s often the most disorderly room in the house.
Get a Kid’s Eye View of the Scene
What looks straightforward to you might seem like an insurmountable task to your kids. If you have younger children, Organized Home recommends that you get on their level to see what the room looks like from their perspective.
When you’re looking up at the storage in the room, you might find that it’s hard to see and even harder to reach. Child-size storage can make all the difference. Accessibility helps, too. That’s why we offer a closet hanging rod that lowers, so kids can move a rod down to hang up clothing and then raise it back up again without climbing or needing help.
Try to Make Cleaning an Instructional Activity
Although it’s probably faster and easier for you to clean the room yourself, it’s important to engage them in the process with your guidance. Cleaning it for them, or insisting that they clean it without help, doesn’t teach them the valuable organizational lessons that you have learned. It’s easy to assume that they understand the most efficient way to work, but those are lessons that come with age, and with either trial and error or through instruction. Instruction is easier.
When your child hits a roadblock, that’s when you can step in to help. Maybe she or he can’t decide on the best way to store books or hang clothing. You can help, or you might realize that she or he needs a better storage solution where everything fits like it should. Some things might not belong in the room at all, and would fit better in the mudroom.
Tidy the Room in Categories
Perhaps one of the most efficient methods for tidying up is the category method. And it’s one that can help your child stay on task. If he/she begins on one side of the room and works their way across, you’ll probably find that a lot of things get relocated once or twice before finally being stored.
To make faster progress, show your child how much simpler it is to focus on one category at a time. Put away all of the books in the room, and then start on toys. Hang up clean clothing, sort out what’s dirty, and then move on to another task. When he or she works this way, they’ll be less likely to get distracted and frustrated by the never-ending clutter, and they’ll make fewer trips across the room, too.
Assess the Closet and Storage Once it’s Clean
You evaluated the room before it was clean, but once the job is done it’s time to have another look. Sure, it’s tidy. But how difficult will it be for your child to keep it that way? Does she or he need another waste receptacle for scribbled paper? Are the clothes too cramped inside the closet? Are his/her favorite books too high on a bookshelf?
A clean room is only as good as your child’s ability to keep it that way. With a custom designed closet system, he/she will have everything that they’ll need in dimensions that work for them and everything that they owns. If space is tight, you might also think about a concealed bed. HGTV says that creative storage is important. This type of system transforms from a desk to a bed with a simple tilt, and there’s room for lots of storage around it.
No storage or closet system can magically keep a kid’s room clean, but the right one can certainly help. It’s all about making things easier, not harder. And with the right components, you can create something that works now and will keep working later.
If you’ve had it up to here with a messy kid’s room, it might be time to schedule a free design consultation with The Closet Works. We have solutions that you might never have dreamed of, and with a combination of quality and affordability that suits any lifestyle.
