Five Things You Can Do to Get Kids to Clean Their Rooms

Whether your kids are 5 or 15, trying to get your kids to clean their room can be really frustrating. On the other hand, holding your nose when you walk by their room or simply shutting the door doesn’t seem like a long-term solution. Part of the problem is that kids feel overwhelmed and incapable of completing the task. When you say, “Go clean your room” they may hear “No fun for you today because it will take you 6 hours to even find the floor!”

Kids often don’t know where to start and feel overwhelmed with the task of straightening and organizing their belongings.  Making the job of cleaning a room more concrete and and manageable may help minimize battles and encourage responsibility. If your child feels competent to complete the job things will go much more smoothly.

While your job is not to clean the room for them, as a parent you are needed to give clear guidelines and help them to develop a sense of competence. This not only results in a clean room but a child with a growing sense of confidence that they can handle the bigger messes that life will someday throw their way.

Here are 5 things you can do to help develop that confident, room-cleaning child.

1. Pare down. Go through the things in your child’s room and help them let go of things they have outgrown or no longer use. It can be overwhelming to find a pair of shorts from a drawer stuffed so full that it can barely close.

2. Give things a home. Go through your child’s toys and determine which ones they still play with. Sort the “keep” toys into categories and find containers that are the correct size to hold them. Label the containers. Pictures work well for kids who cannot read. Make sure the containers are easy to get in and out of or those things are not likely to get put away.

3. Use a miscellaneous basket. What do you do with all of those McDonald’s toys and trinkets from birthday parties? I have a miscellaneous basket in each of my kids’ rooms. I go through them periodically and donate some things to the treasure box at school.

4. Give your child’s toys a limit. When this container is full of legos or Barbies, then we have too many and will need to let go of some. This teaches boundaries of personal possessions.

5. Edit regularly. Children’s needs and interests change quickly when they are a young age. You may need to go through their toys with them on a semi-yearly to yearly basis and ask them “I noticed you don’t seem to be playing with these any longer. Could we donate these and use this container to store _______?” Just before their birthday or Christmas are especially good times to do this.