A Cleaning Game Plan for Kids
By Donna Stark
How has it been staying at home for weeks on end with your children? Have they been a help around the house with cleaning or have their cleaning skills been a complete nightmare to deal with? Hopefully, you have been dealing with really organized and tidy children during this stressful time of life, but if you haven't, you may appreciate knowing that you are not alone! If your children's standard of clean is far removed from your own, keep reading, because in addition to teaching them how to improve their cleaning skills, the steps below will also help to reduce the level of stress you deal with every single day.
A Clean Home Is a Healthy Home
Many children have no idea where to start when they are asked to tidy up and that is why it is so important to teach them healthy lifestyle habits that include taking care of their room and their belongings. If you are tired of telling yours to go back and clean their room over and over again, you may want to provide them with the following game plan.
- Make the bed
- Collect all the misplaced items found on the floor and furniture pieces and put away
- If there is no place for an item, make one ... if a place can't be made, get rid of the item
- Clean out the area under the bed
- Put all dirty clothes in a hamper
- Hang or fold all clean clothes
- Dust all furniture (nightstand, dresser, bed frame, desk)
- Dust window frame and tracks
- Clean mirrors
- Sweep or vacuum the floor
- Empty the trash
Healthy, Happy Home
Having a place for everything in the home and putting everything back in its place helps to keep your home organized, clean, and comfortable. You won't catch yourself fighting with your children's toys for space on the sofa and you won't be tripping over the shoes your sweet ones have left on the staircase. Teaching your children how to properly clean up after themselves may even help to reduce a lot of the clutter around the house and when that happens, you can count on your stress levels decreasing too!
So, are you ready to get your kids in gear? Start slowly and have them focus on their bedrooms first. But after they have mastered their cleaning skills with that, get them moving all around the house. It's a great way to teach them how to be responsible, how to be helpful within the family unit, and how to maintain healthy habits that will carry over through adulthood! It's also a great way to kiss your stress goodbye and say hello to a sparkling, clean home!
To learn more about your health, wellness, and fitness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic in Vancouver, Wash.