How to get kids to stop making messes?
Ramon Grady
2025-06-26 00:34:58
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: 20
Messes can be cleaned. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the constant mess, I encourage you to let go of control and let your kids make messes. Prepare yourself for the mess, they’re bound to happen—especially when you have younger kids. You can set up a specific room in your house that is considered a “mess zone” and let your kids have at it. Unstructured play is OK, we hinder their creativity and artistry when we don’t encourage it. Exist in the moment—not in the mess, because time is something that we can’t get back—but the messes are something that can always be cleaned. Let your kids make the mess, and sometimes even join in for a few, because they can teach us a thing or two about nurturing our inner child. I’ll let my kid have at it, and we’ll simply clean it all up when he’s done.
Cristal Krajcik
2025-06-18 11:53:32
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: 17
Teach your child how to clean up when she makes a mess-keeping her toys, clothes and other stuff neat can be fun and makes life more predictable. Show your child how to put away his toys immediately after he's finished playing, to limit clutter as he bounces from plaything to plaything. Help him pick up the picking-up habit early in life, to encourage him to be a neater child and, later, a more organized adult. Instead of just asking your child to clean up his room, tell him exactly what you'd like him to do. For example, say, "Let's put the pegs in the bucket and the blocks in the box." Make Cleaning Up a Habit, when it happens every day, cleaning up toys or putting away clothes or dishes becomes a habit, just as taking a bath or brushing her teeth is part of your routine. Play Beat the Clock, when your child is trying to beat the smartphone timer, picking up toys is a fun game. Set the timer for 5 minutes and say, "Let's see if we can clean up all of these toys and put them in the toy basket before the timer rings. Go!" Make Small, Do-able Tasks, when a very young child is asked to clean up a mess, he may not be able to even find a place to start, help him by pointing to one toy and saying, "Let's start with your truck, put the truck in the toy box first."
Jaiden Lowe
2025-06-08 07:45:44
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: 18
I need to model the behavior I want to see in my kids and start creating the home I truly want, one filled with order and peace instead of chaos and clutter. I tend to leave my stuff out after using it too, and if they see mommy do it why wouldn’t they do the same? If I want my kids to put things away after using them and not be perpetually messy, I need to model that behavior for them first. They have too much stuff, and I know my kids can’t enjoy everything they have because things are scattered throughout the house. Nothing has a home, and I frequently tell my kids to clean up, but when they ask me, “Where does this go?” I rarely have an answer because few things in our house actually have a home. We need to get rid of probably at least 50% of our stuff, and once we’ve gotten rid of our excess stuff we need to make sure that every item we keep has a home. Finally, we need to make cleaning up a regular part of our routine, and things will be so much easier if we clean as we go versus having to do a massive, usually last minute, clean up. Cleaning up shouldn’t only be done every once in a while, it’s going to take doing a lot of small jobs on a daily basis to keep our house in good shape.
Rosemarie Kemmer
2025-05-29 04:09:13
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: 16
Acknowledge that your life right now with kids is complicated and messy and that your space will reflect that to some degree. Allow them to make a mess, but teach them to clean up after. Once kids hit a certain age, they’re capable of cleaning up after themselves, so allow them to have fun and make a mess doing so, but instill in them the habit of cleaning up immediately after they’re done. Clean as you go, this is the trick to a tidy home whether you have kids or not. Taking one minute to clean up after breakfast is way easier than a full kitchen clean up that takes an hour before bed. Create designated spaces for everything you keep and get each family member to help in identifying where they’d like to house their things, so that the system works for them and they know that they have a responsibility to keep using it. Set weekend chores, as a family, take 30 minutes every weekend to deep clean, that means tidying, dusting and vacuuming everyone’s individual rooms, and then working together each with a designated chore in the main areas of the home.
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