kids bedrooms

Shauna Hanus our expert of the day, writes:

Children are notorious for having messy bedrooms. Parents no longer need to nag and push to get kids to clean their bedroom. By making bedroom cleaning time a fun game your child is more likely to keep the room clean without parent intervention.

Here are three fun and easy tips for cleaning a child’s bedroom.

Tip One:

Take a Picture. The trick here is to help your child clean the bedroom the first time. Then take photos of how you the parent expect the bedroom to look when it is clean. Post the clean bedroom photos around the room so your child knows what you expect when it is time to clean up.

Then when your child cleans you can reference the photos to see if the room is really clean or if more cleaning needs to be done.

Tip Two:

Set a timer. Kids love to play games and if cleaning a bedroom is turned into a game the chore is so much more fun. Depending on how messy your child’s bedroom is set a time for anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes. More than 10 minutes and you run the risk of your child loosing focus.

Once the timer is set your child then races against the time to clean the bedroom before the buzzer goes off. If you want to add in a bit of extra incentive you can tie a prize to the game.

Tip Three:

Hide money. Try hiding coins pennies, dimes, nickels or quarters around the room and under items that need to be cleaned. Your child then has to try and find all the coins you have hidden around the room.

The catch is every time your child picks up something to look under it for a coin he has to put that item away. The incentive here is that your child gets to keep all the hidden coins after the bedroom is cleaned.

By making a game of cleaning your child’s bedroom the chore becomes fun. It all goes back to what Mary Poppins said: “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”