Smart Ways to Encourage Kids to Help With House Cleaning

There’s the dishes, laundry, mopping, sweeping, tidying up, and so much more to do. Sometimes after a long day, all we want to do is collapse on our couch and not do a single thing more. If the kids recklessly run around and make even more mess, the load begins to feel almost unbearable. If you have a mess, and the kids are causing distress, it is time to teach them how to help clean so you can rest.

A great idea to try is to install barn door hardware With a barn door inside your home, you can teach and train kids to keep all of their toys behind the great big barn doors. This will allow for you to have a tidier living space, while having a designated area for all miscellaneous odds and ends of toys that the kids have, from blocks to puzzles, in their place. Once kids recognize that there is a special space just for toys, you can encourage them and remind them that all toys must stay behind the doors once they are done playing with them.

Often kids imitate our actions less than doing as we say. If we make it a regular habit to keep things nice and tidy, our kids will naturally imitate what we do. You can encourage kids to do as mama says by offering them a wet rag for wiping the dining table, a kid’s size broom to help sweep the floor, or the duster to help wipe up particles of dust on the blinds.

The very important thing to remember is that children are just little people, with feelings and little plans in their hearts of their own. With that said, it is good to show love and compassion to our children to make them feel capable and happy so that they may be healthy and confident to help be what we expect them to be or to do what it is that we expect them to do. 

Little children watching a hardworking parent with a positive attitude naturally pick up on such character traits and will by nature react more positively to difficulties and challenges when they are expecting to step up to the plate to help. So basically our way of responding to any situation, including how we react to messes when they are there and the attitude we maintain when clearing them away, is how our kids will learn to react. 

Staying positive while cleaning is possible by mentally preparing ourselves for clean-up time by telling ourselves, “this does not have to be horrible. As soon as it is all done I will rest, and that will take place in the next hour or so.” You can also prepare yourself mentally by not complaining or feeling self-pity, but instead saying to yourself as you clean, “I am grateful for …” and then making a mental list of all that you are grateful for in life. This will initiate positive thinking and alleviate the added stress that often comes with negative thought processes.

Caring for our little ones and cleaning can be a lot of work, but if we set an example, think positively, get organized, and keep our little ones feeling loved and happy, we may just have a bunch of little hands that grow to learn to help around the home. 

It may take time for our kids to learn to deep clean or assist with more difficult chores, but if we start them off simple and keep cleaning fun, even putting on some fun tunes while cleaning, kids can get the hang of smaller chores and eventually heftier ones in the long run. 

Little chores like sweeping, wiping the little crumbs off the table, and picking up a teddy bear off the floor, or even folding laundry, may not mean we have elves like Santa to do all the work for us, but it will put a smile on our face and warm our heart to know we are not alone in taking care of the cleaning in the home. We have other little hearts with big souls alongside us ready to help.