5 Tips for Getting Your Child to Clean Their Messy Room

Can you not get your child to clean up their toys? Here are a few tips to persuade them to clean their messy room.

People who grow up with well-established daily routines are less likely to struggle with time management or attention issues during adult life.

So, as a parent, you want to teach your kid nothing but good habits, like keeping their own space clean and uncluttered.

This would be easy if a simple “Go clean your room!” worked. But more often than not, it doesn’t.

So how can you persuade your child to tidy up their messy room? We have all the secrets!

Set a Good Example

Do you keep your room clean?

There’s no such thing as “Do as I say, not as I do” when it comes to teaching your kids good habits.

If you constantly tell them how important it is to do chores and to keep the house tidy, but then your own room is a mess, your words end up losing meaning.

Make a Checklist With Tasks

Having everything written down and available for everyone to see means that there are no excuses for anyone not to do their part.

Make a weekly list of age-appropriate chores for everyone in the family, so that your kid understands that keeping the house neat comes from teamwork.

If your child doesn’t know how to read yet, use images instead of words.

Start By Doing the Chores With Them

Notice that we said with them, and not for them.

During the first couple of weeks, take some time to do your kid’s chores with them. Explain each task you’ve written down on the checklist and show them how to do it.

And make it fun! Put their favorite music on, keep the energy levels high and you’ll see that your kid will even start enjoying cleaning their room.

Have a Place for Everything

Cleaning and tidying up a room becomes a lot easier if everything has its place.

If your child’s room doesn’t have enough boxes, baskets or shelves, it might be time to go buy some.

Take your kid with you and let them choose the ones they like best. This way you give them a stronger sense of ownership of their room, which is also a great way of motivating them to keep it neat.

Once you have all the storage you need, get some labels and, together with your kid, assign a place for everything.

And while you’re at it, check if there are things you can donate to charity or that you should throw away. If you end up with too much trash, it might be a good idea to call a trash removal service, like Same-Day Rubbish Removal.

Have Incentives and Consequences

As much as you show them how to clean and tidy, and try to make it fun, the incentives and consequences method is probably the most efficient one.

So if you’re met with some resistance from your kid to do things right, let them know that there will be consequences.

For instance, for every toy they leave in the middle of the floor, they go to bed 5 minutes earlier than their usual bedtime.

You can also give them incentives: if they follow the checklist to perfection for the entire month, you’ll take them to the zoo, for instance.

Bye-bye, Messy Room!

It might take a while for your kid to get on the cleaning routine you want them to and to start taking the initiative to tidy up their messy room. But you’ll see that if you keep following these tips, eventually it’ll become natural to them.

And also, don’t forget to relax! Who’s the perfect human being who never lets their house get a little bit too chaotic anyway?

If you’re looking for more parenting tips, we have a whole section on our blog dedicated to it. Go explore!