Okay, here’s the thing: I know kids will be kids and one of the things that most certainly means is that they will have messy bedrooms. I get that. And I’m not a total neat-freak or germ fanatic so I honestly don’t mind a little bit of clutter or unmade beds or colonies of stuffed animals. It’s just when you walk into a room and don’t know where to step because you can’t see the floor that I have a problem with it.
But you’d think that I had just told my children they were to be slowly flayed and disemboweled with a dull, rusty knife when I asked them to clean their bedrooms on Saturday morning. Wails of terror and pain ensued and they took off running. We were expecting company that afternoon and I had to get the house ready and go grocery shopping, so I needed them to take on the room-cleaning job on their own. AND: at seven and 9.5, they are more than capable of taking on the task.
But…no. My husband and I raced around the house vacuuming, dusting, tidying and cleaning, with the girls following us around whining and complaining about cleaning their rooms. In the end, their Dad recommended we just quit worrying about it – his reasoning was that if they chose to live in messy rooms, that was their decision and they’d have to live with the consequences.
I have to admit, the reasoning is hugely seductive. It would mean I’d no longer have to hound them daily to pick up their dirty laundry, toys, books and more. I could just shut the doors and ignore what lurks behind them. I also think it might be a more valuable lesson for the girls: if you want to live in a nice environment, you’re going to have to take accountability for keeping it that way. If you don’t put in the effort, you’ll have to put up with the results. Smart, yes?
On the other hand: I feel like their rooms should be tidy. I feel embarrassed for them to have friends up to their rooms when the rooms are such pigsties. I feel worried those kids will go home and tell their own mothers how much of a bomb site my kids’ bedrooms are. I know, I know: stupid…and yet, I care.
So the point of this post is this: what do you guys do about messy kids’ bedrooms? Maybe your kids are that rare breed that don’t get their rooms messy, or maybe you have a strict schedule for room rehabilitation. Maybe you let your kids keep their personal space as you see fit, and don’t go in unless you absolutely have to. Help me decide how to handle this parenting conundrum. Please!
Hi, Kath,
My daughters sound a lot like yours! I have tried many methods (no playdates, no tv, etc) with my younger one, but I usually ease up on her because I don’t set a very good example myself. (read: GUILT) I think I’ll try the flylady method (I like her philosophy for many things) with my 10 year old, but I think my 16 year old is beyond help! Funny, the 18 year old son is the most organized and most tidy of the bunch.
Yay, I hope it works for you! It’s that combination of purging, tidying, clearing that really makes this a success. You’re teaching them not only to clean, but also to bless others with their unwanted stuff.
If you need more ideas for what to write on your slips of paper, visit http://www.flylady.net/pages/riley_challenge.asp
Even though she has challenges listed for almost every day, there are about 30 core tasks that just get repeated over and over.
Personally, leave it,, shut the door, don’t look… HOWEVER,, “Mom, can Mary come over?” You reply “Sorry, your room’s to messy…” or “Mom, Can I go to Mary’s to play”… You reply “Sure, as soon as you have a clean room..”.. Man You want to see how fast rooms get cleaned…. Works as a charm for my Stubborn, mouthy, smart 9 year daughter…
Hey guys, great advice from everyone. I love Lisa’s suggestions, and I think my kids could really get into the whole idea of the random job selection (“random” is their favourite word these days). Plus, you get a little bit of everything: purging, tidying, clearing. And spreading it out over the week makes it a lot less daunting. I may just have to give it a try!
Hi! You don’t know me, but I’ve just recently found your blog and I enjoy following it. I had to comment because I’ve recently found a great system that helps my kids (12 & 9) keep their rooms relatively tidy without having to be spotless or clean them all at once. (I too think it’s important for kids to learn to pick up after themselves, but also that their rooms should be a place they enjoy and can play in.)
I learned this technique from flylady.net. No one likes to do marathon cleaning. It’s much easier to pick up a little at a time on a regular basis than to wait until their rooms (or our house) is a disaster and then try to do it all at once.
With my kids, I’ve started a “room challenge” system. I wrote out several SMALL tasks on slips of paper and put them in a box. Then once or twice a week, one kid will pick a paper and they’ll both work on that thing in their rooms. No task takes more than 10 minutes.
A few examples:
– pick up 5 things from your floor and put them away
– choose 5 things in your room that you don’t play with anymore that we can give away to someone else.
– choose one drawer in your dresser. Go through the clothes and pick out anything that you don’t like or doesn’t fit you anymore so that we can give it away.
– spend 5 minutes clearing off the top of your nightstand/dresser
– look around your room and throw away any trash that you see (tissues, papers, etc)
– look at the floor of your closet and pick up any clothes that need to be put away.
I have about 20 slips of paper in the box, and when they’re done, we start over again.
By doing this regularly (even once or twice a week), their rooms will eventually get tidy and stay tidy. And they are so quick to do, the kids will make a game of it instead of whining!
My son Chase, 7 keeps his room rather tidy he doesn’t really play in there often. However my daughter Miyah, 5 is living in the leftover from a hurricane.
She goes to her perfectly neat room for play time and an hour later it looks like a bomb blew up! She has so much “stuff” in her room I don’t even know where it all comes from.
I started by cleaning it with her every day, then tidying it myself, then asking her (which she just pushed it all under her bed). Now the rule is on weekends she doesn’t have to clean it (because she is in it more than during the week) and we keep the door closed! On Sunday nights she has to clean it with help and it is expected to stay that way for the most part for the week.
So far so good!
My kids rarely have messy rooms. If they do, it never takes longer than 10 minutes to clean up. Before you hate me, you have to understand that they don’t have much stuff! Dirty clothes go in a laundry basket in the hallway every night, and they only have enough clothes in their drawers for what they need, so they aren’t pulling out 25 t-shirts trying to find the ‘right one’! We really keep a limit on how many toys and personal items they can have in their room, and everything has a ‘home’ which makes tidying up rooms so much easier.
I think it is important for kids to learn to keep their rooms clean and have a sense of order. You can help them by culling the majority of their things, and ensuring everything has a distinct place to go.
As for the rest of my house…ugh….
I’ve given my 9yr old 3 jobs in the house.
1) make his bed
2) put the clothes away that I lay on his bed after I do laundry
3) turn the basement lights off everynight.
Cuyler’s room is always a DISASTER to the point where I don’t even let the cleaning lady in it sometimes.
Eva and Cam rarely ever play in their rooms so they’re not too untidy, but I have previously given Cam a deadline (think it was a week) to have his room cleaned up and everything that wasn’t put away went into donations.
He picked his clothes up and a few toys and the rest he left for me to get rid of.
That seemed to help.
Maybe tell them that anything that isn’t special enough to have a proper spot can go out to Salvation Army or Goodwill. And follow through. Whatever they don’t clean up – get rid of.
My kids’ rooms are small so they don’t spend a lot of time in them other than sleep. Plus, they don’t keep many toys or “stuff” in them either. However, mess is an issue no matter what. I think that it is completely reasonable that they clean their rooms if it is important to you. So, there should be a motivation (aka a consequence) for them to do it. They can live in a messy room but the expectation is that when guests come over the house is clean and tidy. That means THEIR guests too. In other words, messy room = no playdates.
A friend of mine got so sick of the mess that she told her kids they had the weekend to clean their rooms. Whatever was left on the floor or not in its proper spot by Monday morning would go in the garbage. She put a few garbage bags outside each child’s room for affect. Two of her kids did a really good job. The other, did not. When he came home from school on Monday there were 3 garbage bags full of his stuff waiting for garbage day. He was hysterical! So, she said, if he went through it and cleaned it all by garbage day it wouldn’t get thrown out. Otherwise, it would stay in the trash and go out with all of the garbage. By Monday night his room was spotless.