How To Keep Your Child’s Room Clean When You’re Selling Your House in Utah

Published: December 07, 2020

Every parent since the dawn of children’s rooms has struggled to keep their child’s room clean. This is a battle that has raged for hundreds of years, one that you and your child will reenact as you want to walk safely over their floor and they want to drop toys at will.

There are many ways to approach the clean room conundrum. You can yell and get mad. You can clean the room yourself. Or you can teach your child how to organize and give them the tools to do so. Even toddlers can learn the basics of cleaning, but children aren’t actually born with the ability to clean their rooms. Many don’t yet know how to sort a pile of toys or organize a shelf. But you can teach them.

Today, we’re here to talk about a few clever techniques to help you and your child work together to keep their room clean. Without tears or tantrums.

Get a Toybox

First and foremost, your child needs a place to put all their toys and favorite things that wind up all over the floor. Chances are that when you tell your child to clean, they don’t actually know where to start. The toybox is a perfect opening move for any parent frustrated by stepping on legos and kicking piles of action figures.

All you need is a large box that your child can easily access to throw their things into. The toys won’t be organized inside the box, but your child will have a single go-to place to put toys when you want them off the floor.

Cubbies and Cube Storage

Cubbies are the next level of organization for children. As they get older, it will be easier for kids to sort between one type of toy and another. In fact, some children start to do this naturally because they enjoy sorting and keeping their toys mentally organized. Even if the toys wind up all over the floor.

A shelf of cubbies is a great way to allow your child to sort their own toys while still getting everything up off the floor. You can have one cubby for dolls, one for blocks, one for coloring supplies and so on. You can also help them sort their clean clothing with cubbies and dirty clothing into a hamper.

If you don’t have a cubby shelf, it’s also easy to make cubbies out of ‘cube storage’ cloth cubes that fit into a normal shelf. These your child can even pull off the shelf and use as portable toyboxes for a single type of toy. Or sit with on the floor while they scoop the right type of toy into each cube.

Install a Low Closet Bar

If you want your children to keep their clothing tidy, make sure they can reach the clothing organization tools. Many children have no problem practicing folding and hanging up clothes. Especially if you do it with them. But they often can’t reach the closet bar, or higher-placed drawers and shelves. Large drawers may also be too much for them to handle.

So instead, bring the clothing storage down to their level. Use low-set shelves for folded clothes and try installing a lower closet bar so that your child can hang up and re-hang their own clothing.

Teaching How to Clean

Finally, all of these techniques will see the best results if you sit down and teach your child how to use them. Children aren’t born with the ability to organize a messy room into a tidy one. At first, they don’t even realize that sorting is the first step. So walk them through it many times before you expect your child to be able to fully clean on their own.

Start with dirty clothes in the hamper. Your child will likely find it easy to fish out all the clothes from the pile and put them in one place. Then choose one type of toy and a place that it goes. Then another. Talk it out and make each step part of a friendly routine. Eventually, your child will learn the routine of cleaning and the right thoughts to guide themselves through the process.

With easy places to put things and a new organizational routine, your child will soon be able to tidy up on their own. After that, the room cleaning battle will mostly depend on how much your child actually wants a clean room. And that’s a whole other realm of parenting. For more great organizational tips and tricks, contact us today!