Cleaning up their room {8 tips for preschoolers}

So I would bet that many of you grew up being told that the easiest way to keep a room clean is to have a place for everything and to put the item away as soon as you are done with it. While this is great advice, you cannot realistically expect your preschool aged child to keep their rooms clean every minute of the day. In fact, kids this age are usually great at making a big mess in their rooms, which is great because it is part of playing!

 

While cleaning up our little messes throughout the day is ideal that does not always happen. In fact most days her room will be super messy by evening time. So when I ask my daugter to go clean her room, most of the time the mess can be overwhelming to her and it is hard for her to know where to even start. So here are a few strategies that I use with her to make the clean up process go a little bit smoother:

1) Store a lot of toys out of sight - we have quite a few toys that are either under her bed or in her closet. They are still accessible to her but they are a little more difficult to get to and a lot of them she has to ask me for help to get. She has a few baskets on her bookshelf that rotate some of the closet into. Not only does this keep the toys in her room fresh and interesting for her but it also means she has less toys to spread around her room.

2) Sort through clothes in drawers every few months - If your childs' drawers are too full they will be much harder to keep orderly. Drawers that are stuffed full quickly can turn to looking chaotic when your child starts searching through them to find the one shirt they must wear that day. Also it will be much easier for your child to put away her own clothes if there is enough room in them and it is clear which drawer each article of clothing belongs.

 

3) Turn up the music - put on a fun cd or pandora station and crank it up! Or search for the clean up song on youtube and have your child sing along while she is working.

4) Give them small tasks - This is probably the biggest thing for us that makes cleaning up each day go more smoothly. I will tell my daughter that her job is books first. She will clean up all the books  then asks what her next job is. I will then have her clean up just the marbles, then play kitchen things, and so on until there is only the random stuff left. Which leads me to my next one...

5) Have an "everything else" container - you know that slinky and notebook and flashlight your child loves that don't really have a container of their own? Put them in the everything else container and move on. Store similar things alike (all the balls together or stuffed animals together) but the random things need a home too.

6) Be in the room if possible - I am not in the room everytime and even when I am, sometimes I am working on something else (folding laundry for instance). But just having me there is more fun for her so she is usually more cooperative (plus I can keep her on track since she gets distracted easily with all the fun toys).

7) Make it a race - Race against the clock or see who can pick up the most books or who can do their small task (see #4) the fastest. Or sometimes I will clean up my room at the same time and we will see who can get done with their own room first.

8) Get it into one room - Before she even starts picking up her room, I have her go around the house and bring everything that is hers into her bedroom. That way the mess is contained in one place and she can start cleaning up from there. But if you are really short on time, have her just do this and worry about her bedroom in the morning. That way after you tuck her in and close the door for the night, you can at least kick back on the couch and put your feet up without having to clear a space on the coffee table first.

What did I miss? Do you have a trick to making it easier on your child to clean up his/her room?