Cleaning Bedrooms

oh. my. goodness. You are my twin. Can I come over? I’ll make the coffee and we’ll comiserate.

At the beginning of our summer break I declared all out war on the children’s bedrooms and so far I am, shall we say, NOT winning.

Yes they trash their rooms daily. No I don’t know what to do about it. So I am all ears and hoping someone will give some really great advice.

For the record I am trying for the sorted bins, not the toy chest, b/c when we had a toy chest all the toys ended up lost and broken and never played with…

I am thinking that some habit training is in order here but don’t know where to start.

~Jenn

((HUGS))

We’ve got 2 bedrooms with kids, the two girls age 5 and 10 are in the first.  One child is a neat nut, the other is a hoarder.  Then 3 of the boys share a bedroom (ages 6, 3, 2 – the baby is in our room).  They are all more the “dump it all out to find what we want and play amid the piles” type.

The only way we stay sane is the following:

All toys have been sorted into tubs that are labeled.  These reside in the closet of each bedroom, or the attic in the case of our extra large duplo tub.  Closets are locked.  Each week each child chooses 1-2 things to have out.  These go in a 3 drawer rubbermaid tower that is fairly narrow (think 12′ wide insteaad of 24″).  A thing may be a lego set, a few cars, a doll with a change of clothes, etc. 

The children clean their own rooms, I never participate unless it is time to clean out the papers they’ve dragged up there.  Everyone has picking up in their chorepacks, so they just do it.  If they turn in the chorepack having not done it they’re disciplined for dishonesty (moving the card to the back of the chorepack is only to be done when you finish the task).

Other toy rules at our house are as follows:

If it comes down stairs and is left alone for more than 5 minutes I will confiscate the toy.  If you manage to get all your toys confiscated that are out too bad so sad. 

If it is too little to have around the baby it must stay upstairs.  if it comes downstairs I confiscate it, even if you’re holding it.

Confiscated toys go back to the closet.

Now in the beginning of this limited toys available situation the children were oh so bored by the end of the first day.  Around the 4th day their creativity came out and toys were played with in more ways.  We also spent two weeks in habit training on the confiscation rules.  For those 2 weeks a toy was confiscated for 24 hours instead of the rest of the week. 

The only thing we do have available all the time  is dress up type items/playsilks.  Those are in a tub under beds.

The baby has a few toys out downstairs, though generally he prefers to play with bowls, playsilks, or board books. 

One last thing – having had several months of this we have been able to pare down the toys we keep more because we see what actually gets pulled out of the closet to be played with and what is never chosen. 

*Sigh.*

I was in the midst of composing a nice response to this about my own kids’ messy rooms….and then I realized that you’ve brought to the surface one of my worst habits: inconsistency.

And then, all I could think of was, *sigh.*

***SIGH!***

Okay, let me try to address this, mostly for my own inspiration. I feel as though my kids have too much “stuff,” and to top it off, we’re living with my elderly dad who is a packrat and forgetful….which means he has crates and piles of things left out “where I can see them” in all of the rooms that are “his” and in some places that we share. My kids are 13, 12, and 10, so they’ve begun wanting to separate their things. A big communal toybox doesn’t work in general anymore. The girls’ room (13 and 10) has piles, baskets, surfaces full of too many things. They often can’t find what they are looking for. My son’s room has less in it because he is autistic and I don’t allow him to keep some things in his room or he doesn’t have them at all. (No mp3 player, any cd’s he listens to are kept downstairs because he isn’t responsible yet to have his own cd player, etc.) Everything of his gets shoved under his bed, and a lot of it is just parts of things he’s taken apart or broken.

I blame myself a lot because I seem to be too tied up with other things (autism behavior issues, life as a single mom, part-time work, homeschooling with very little to spend on resources), so I have been very inconsistent when it comes to expecting them to maintain clean rooms and enforcing the rules regarding that. I believe if I could work on the habit of consistency with regards to chores and rules for such, I could have a greater impact on my kids in this area.

One other thought occurred to me, however. My personal style of organizing has a lot to do with being a visual person. So, if rooms are going to look neat and tidy to me, they will have smaller containers of sorted items placed in the proper place. This may not be the case for my kids (or for your husbands, for that matter). Now, if my kids were all like me, they would smile and nod and say, “Oh, yes, Mommy….it would be wonderful to have our things all sorted into pretty bins on those lovely shelves….can my bins be yellow, Mommy?” Of course, I’m laughing just imagining that!

Alas, my kids are NOT all like me (oh, too bad! ), so I know that I have to reconsider my cleaning expectations and just set some general rules about finding places to store things, putting things back where they belong, and making sure floors are free of debris and surfaces are dusted/cleaned. And how the bed should look when it is made. (Blankets folded at the end of the bed? A comforter and pillow sham? Just pull the covers up and smooth them out? Everyone is different with this.)

I would just like to be able to send a child into their room to find whatever they need within a minute or less and to not have dust bunnies chasing around the room. That should be my goal.

Sue

My kids trash their rooms every day.  The oldest is a craft nut so her room is the worst!  I spent serveral years when I required that rooms be clean before breakfast (and I’d go check everyday).  I though eventually it would become a habit and I’d not have to keep up with checking everyday.  Not so.  If I want clean room, I have to check and not allow breakfast to be served before rooms are clean.  It got old.  I gave up!  (besides to tell the truth I’m not the neatest person in the world and if I put my energy into checking their rooms, mine is not going to be clean)  About once a week I require them to do a full room cleaning and they do, even the 4 year old, with out grummbling so I’m happy.  I also do make sure to praise (and sometimes even include a little money) anytime one of them cleans up (even a little) on their own– maybe eventually that will make some head way but I’m not too optimistic. 

When I did require clean rooms I built it slowly.  Week one: they had the make thier beds before breakfast and that was it.  Week two: put dirty clothes in the hamper and bed; week three:  pick up trash, clothes in hamper, bed; ….eventually: desk, books, toys, trash, hamper, bed before breakfast.  Really slow, really clear. 

I think with the room thing it good to REALLY think about your goals– and not think of it as a moral issue.   I decided my goal is for the kids to know how to clean their room–which they do as evidenced by the once a week cleaning, and that they do it when I ask (which is not that often) and do it with out complaining (this would really be my goal number one).  If you ask me cleanliness is not next to godliness,  but not complaining is.    But if a clean room really is important to you it is possible–just a lot of work. 

Good luck.  I don’t think there is a parent today who doesn’t stuggle with the clean room issue!  Our kids today just have too much stuff! When I read the little house books I always think  man housework would be so much easier if my kids only had one corn-cob doll and 3 outfits each!

I didn’t read anything other than 1st post.  So bare with me.

My kids share with one other child.  They each have a dresser.  They DO not keep toys in there rooms except for something that is nice or presentable that can be kept on top of the dresser.  The dresser must at all times appear neat to the eye.

All toys are kept in bins in the closet under the stairs which is our toy closet and a couple other places.

Our children every thursday vaccuum there bedrooms and dust.  Beds are to appear tidy everyday.  Mind you “appear” meaning when you look at it, it isn’t in a heap.  We only MAKE the bed when we wash the sheets (which isn’t often enough), otherwise teh sheets are pulled tightly down.

That’s that. Misty

Our rooms get thoroughly played in everyday…For actual daily maintainence, we make the bed and put away all clothes (drawers and laundry).  The animals and babies need to be on the owners bed before breakfast.  We tidy in the evening before bed.  We completely sort and clean the room once a week. 

We put all the girls in one room and made the extra room into a playroom/library area.  The toys are sorted into tubs and are put in the closet.  They are SUPPOSED to put one away to get the other out, but often I find them mixing and matching them into their play.  They know how to clean, and that is my main goal.  I had to decide priorities when starting homeschool and all the other things that I have to do…so we do not have to have spotless rooms everyday.  Somedays we do a clear path to the door (for the bathroom or an emergency) and other days everything is picked up.  If we are busy having awesome experiences in other areas of our life, I pick my battles.  =)  Is a clean room worth missing an extention of a lesson that was greeted with enthusiasm and interesrt???  Not always to me…  Yet our house is small and usually tidy, as I am trying to instill that habit…

The only thing in the bedroom now are the dress-up clothes tubs under one set of bunkbeds and the tubs of stuffed animals under the other bunkbeds.  It does make clean up easier since I am not sorting the plastic stuff from the clothes.

On another note…we find that the interest in the toys is much higher when they are sorted by style, etc.

I feel shy posting again because my personal nickname is Know it all Nelly.

With the description of your house and situation, I think you ought to go with your husband on this one. It seems like he shares a work area near your son’s room and doesn’t mind his toys out. Maybe zoning the toys…legos for upstairs away from baby and kitchen, dress up items in the girls’ room. Knex in our house takes a long time to clean up, and since it is an expensive set, I really only let them play with knex at the table. We let them keep their creations for a few days on top of a cabinet…but that knex, while amazing, is my thorn in the flesh if left unattended.

Your closet without the door needs the large orange toolboxes with locks to store art supplies in plastic pencil boxes as I mentioned above. I couldn’t survive without it. I love looking at schoolrooms that are so pretty and have every art supply available for spontaneous creations. I just know that our art supplies would go into spontaneous combustion if let to little fingers. Umm, it was a disaster until I fixed that problem. I can afford to buy nice art pencils, paints, and pastels knowing it is under lock and key. Same with science supplies.

Regarding playing with children and being a better mom: While children love to play with their parents, they dearly love the presence of one…you don’t have to be involved directly for them to feel your motherly warmth. Masterly inactivity is a blessing to both mothers and children. Just last night, I quietly sat outside to write while the children played nearby. Their voices went up a joyful notch as they noticed me…even though I was not part of the town Merryweather they play…I said that I was Lady Governor. I got a lot of school planning done and they felt peace because of my proximity. Even though you are not in your 20’s, you are a lovlier mother now than ever. 

Janell