When you want your children to clean up their room, are they successful at it? Or do they seem clueless about where to start? Here are some tips to help teach kids how to tidy up their space:
Sort through the room with them and get rid of anything they have outgrown, don’t play with or don’t want anymore. If they are reluctant to part with things, offer to let them sell their toys at a local consignment shop and allow them to keep the money from whatever sells. If they still can’t let anything go, offer to box up a portion of their toys for 6 months and store them in the garage.
Group items they want to keep into categories (e.g. stuffies, toy vehicles, books, etc.) Allocate space in the room for each category.
Label each space. This is key, because labels enable your child to know where to put their things away.
Make it part of the daily routine for your child to:
- Put dirty clothes in the hamper
- Put clean clothes away
- Bring any dirty dishes to the kitchen
Make it part of a weekly routine for them to clean their room. Saturday mornings after breakfast are a great time for this. If your child doesn’t know where to start, help them make a list of areas to tidy:
- Put items on the bed away
- Put items on the dresser away
- Put items on the floor away
- Put items on the nightstand away
- Straighten up books
Children under the age of 9 will probably need Mom or Dad’s help to keep them on task and to remind them where things go. If this is too much for your child to complete in one day, then break it up into a couple of days each week. If even that is too much for your child, then it’s time to consider whether they still have too many toys and items in their room. Perhaps it’s time to box up even more.
If you are routinely struggling with keeping your child’s room tidy, reach out to us here at reSPACEd. We work with children quite frequently and are happy to set up new organizing systems that your child can maintain. :
