Improve Your Child's Bedroom Cleaning Technique

If your child is normal, chances are his or her bedroom looks like chaos sometimes. You can tell your child to clean the messy bedroom, but even with best efforts, it can look like nothing has been done. Is there a way to get your child to clean up after self? Good luck with that one. But more specifically, is there a way to help your child learn how to clean a bedroom right, when it's time to clean? Yes, there are several ways. Find out what you can do to kick-start your child's bedroom cleaning.

Telling Doesn't Always Work

How many times have you told your child to go back and clean the bedroom again? You do this, because the trashcan overflows, and dirty clothes are still in a heap beside the bed. The floor is scattered with scuzzies and the desk is sticky. It seems no matter how many times you tell your child how to clean the bedroom, he or she just doesn't apply that information next time around. Why is that?

Cleaning Must Be Taught

Children don't automatically know how to clean their bedrooms. They must be taught and once may not be enough. Did you learn everything you were taught the first time? Repetition builds memory for a task, and sometimes it takes a lot of drill to accomplish a long-term memory. But there are more effective ways to teach a skill to your child than to merely verbalize it over and over.

Cleaning Must Be Modeled

What we hear often goes in one ear and out the other. But what we see sticks with us. If your child is to learn how to clean his or her bedroom, you must model the cleaning methods. With your child's help, you pick the dirty clothes up off the floor and put them into the hamper. You send your child for 2 garbage bags--one to collect the present garbage and the other to line the can for the next time. Show your child; don't just tell.

Work Side By Side

You need to model cleaning methods; but do so with your child's help. If you do otherwise, your child will let you do all the work, and the learning will not be as effective. He or she may not even pay attention while you labor. Minds wander, and cleaning can unearth a few interesting toys that need current attention.

You need to get in there and work side-by-side, no matter how frustrated you get with the mess or how annoyed your child gets with your presence in his or her space. Cleaning habits are taught. Once learned, you don't need to clean alongside your child.

Provide Enough Storage Space

Kids don't always see the mess. You might need to try the big pile in the middle of the floor strategy. Pull everything to the center of the room where it can be addressed. But be sure your child has sufficient storage space in his or her bedroom. Much of the clutter may be a result of insufficient storage.

Purchase and label containers, and remember to take your storage space in the vertical direction. Not everything must sit on the floor. Use wall storage, under the bed storage, desk organizers, and closet organizers. You may be surprised to find your child able to clean better when there is a place to put the stuff.

Create a Checklist

Perhaps the most overlooked method of instruction is the item checklist. If your child can't read well, use picture to denote certain tasks. If your child reads, write each task on a checklist, and post the checklist behind the bedroom door. Let your child know that the checklist is the judge, not you. The checklist determines if the bedroom is clean or needs more attention. Everything that's on the list gets done right or it gets done over.

Let the Checklist Rule

The checklist takes the stress out of you being the bad guy and puts the responsibility for behavior on your child. The great thing about the check list is that nothing gets forgotten. The list is there to remind the child. After weeks of practice, your child will know what's on the checklist and may not need to refer to it as often. This means your child's bedroom will be cleaner, and the task won't be so daunting.

Typical Child's Bedroom Checklist

Put dirty clothes in hamper.
Take hamper to laundry room.
Pick up scuzzies off floor.
Vacuum or sweep floor.
Dust all surfaces.
Hang up clean clothes.
Put shoes in closet.
Close closet doors and drawers.
Make bed or strip bedding.
Put stuffed animals in tubs.
Wash up sticky surfaces.
Empty trash and refill with bag.
Return books to shelf.
Put toys where toys go.
Put away what doesn't belong in room.

If you are not seeing your standard of clean when your child says his or her bedroom is done, then you might want to give these cleaning tips a try. Model cleaning methods with your child, provide storage space for everything, and create a checklist to aid your child's memory.