Best Ways To Keep Your House Clean With Kids

ike most people, you would want your home to be clean and always ready to receive guests. You might have your own cleaning routine, organizing method, schedule to follow and everything else to keep your home as welcoming as it can get. But it will be an entirely different story or scenario if you have growing, curious kids. One reality check and you will see toys scattered around the house, writings on the walls, juice spills, food morsels on the floor and what not.

You find yourself going after your children and their mess. The whole house is in chaos and you can’t seem to keep it clean. Will it be possible to keep your house clean with kids running around? With these tips we’re sure you can.

1. Define Your “Clean”

It will stress you out if the “clean” that you mean when describing your home is spotless, or looking like it was cleaned by professionals. If you have kids at home, you may find this impossible to overcome. You have to keep in mind that it is not a standing order that you have to keep your homes spotless clean.

You can define your “clean” as things properly stowed after using, tables and counters cleared of unnecessary stuff, no major spills. And, you have to make this known to everyone living in your house so you’ll be on the same page.

2. Observe Kids’ Habits

Your kids have their own habits and behavior that you have to carefully consider when you want to keep your house clean. You must know how they behave in certain rooms in your house, what time do they regularly do something, where they often stay in the house and other things of similar nature.

This is important when you set your own cleaning protocol or system that you would want everyone in the house to follow or comply.

3. Set up house cleaning system

After you have defined what you mean by “clean” and have observed your kids’ habits, you can then go ahead with setting up a house cleaning system. Simply put, everyone in the house must remember to return the things to their proper places. This will work when you set a storage bins system. Every stuff has a place where it belongs. Make your system easy to understand and follow. After all, it’s the kids that also need to follow your system.

To further illustrate, after your kids are done playing, you can extend their playing time but now, with stowing their stuff away, in mind. If your kids are competitive, you can then make cleaning up like a contest, whoever gets the most toys back to their storage bins can win a prize or something like that. You can also set an eating protocol based on your kids’ behavior when eating like having wipes ready on the table when eating in case of spills or smudges. You can come up with your own.

4. Keep bins and other storage accessible to the kids

Another reason why kids just don’t seem to mind where they put their stuff is because the storage is not accessible to them. Storage bins or clothes racks that they can’t reach would make it impossible for them to put their toys and other things back in. Bins with tight lids would be difficult for them to open. If this is the scenario, the tendency for the kids would be to just put their stuff anywhere.

You can put in the closet racks at kid-height so they can reach it and can easily hang their coats and other clothes. Open bins too will make it easy for them to store their toys away.

5. Keep breakables and other luxury decor from kids’ reach

Like any other homemaker, you would want to put some decors here and there. Glass trays and coasters, silver candle holders, porcelain ware and others can sure add a touch of luxury and elegance to your home. But it wouldn’t really work all the time if you have kids running around the house.

You may want to tone down a bit on the luxury part and get more things that are functional and practical. You can save up for all those when the kids have grown a bit and understand that things can break.

6. Do your daily dusting and sweeping

Things can pile up and these include toys, clothes and other kid stuff. If you don’t do your daily dusting and sweeping, just imagine the work that you would have to do when you pass it off for three days. Besides, it doesn’t really take that long. You would want to sleep in peace knowing that everything is back in its place, right? Ten to twenty minutes is all it’s going to take.

7. Train your kids to clean their rooms

Training your kids how to clean their rooms would involve your active participation. This means you literally have to clean with them and not just instruct them what to do and where to put what. You can make cleaning your bonding session and make it fun for them to do.

You can set a day in a week where all of you do your cleaning. You then show them how to do cleaning chores such as dusting, wiping, sweeping and operate a vacuum, even. You can teach them how to recycle and take out the trash. You have to start them young so they will bring it with them when they grow up.

8. Welcome your kids’ own way of organizing

Your kids will reach a certain age when they want to do more things on their own. As much as we do not want our things to be arranged or organized in a manner that is not our own, your kids would probably think the same. Ask them how they would like to arrange their stuff or organize their things and guide them through it. It would do them a great deal if at a young age they can learn to be resourceful and creative.

9. Delegate a cleaning supervisor among your kids

Another strategy in training your kids to clean up is to let another supervise the other kids. In this way, they will try to see in your perspective what needs to be cleaned and how clean it should be. Let them take turns in being the cleaning supervisor to ensure that every spot is covered and every clutter is stowed. Not only will you teach them all about cleaning, you will also teach them leadership that will be useful when they grow up.

You can keep a house clean even with kids

You can put an end in the argument that you cannot have a clean house if you have growing kids. That is a myth that needs debunking. You only need to take a double dose of patience and creativity to get the kids to help out. If you start them young in being aware of how a clean and organized home can benefit a family then you will somehow get the idea how they would be like when they have a family of their own.