My 9 year old daughter has been struggling to clean her room. You may know the scenario. Kid walks into bedroom. Stands there looking at the mess. Begins to cry. Mum gets cranky. Dad yells. Daughter cries. The room ends up being clean by everyone rather than just the kid. Repeat every 2 weeks or so.
It has been driving us all insane. We end up spending a good hour putting toys away, finding clothes stashed in places that are just unexplainable. The whole time my anger levels increasing, and everyone just about ready to throttle each other.
Now, my daughter hasn't got a huge room. It's a reasonable size room for a kid. She isn't overly spoilt with a huge amount of toys. Plus it is the only area her toys can be. We consistently go through her toys and cull any toys she doesn't play with in order to try and maintain some sort of order.
The issue is the maintenance of the room on a daily level. A lot of the time a 9 year old needs single instructions to get anything achieved. When trying to clean a room... this can be tedious.
We sat one afternoon discussing options on how to keep the room tidy. My partners idea.. "get rid of the toys." Cue wide eyes from OJ. She still hasn't quite got the concept of sarcasm. OJ said she finds it hard to know what to do when she walks into the room to clean up.
*LIGHT BULB MOMENT*
Checklist time! I jumped on my computer and created a checklist to give her a step by step idea on what she needed to do daily. I printed it off, laminated it and put it on her wall. Before we could implement it, we all jumped in and cleaned her room to how it should be. The first two days I stood in her doorway and explained each step for her as she put things away.
After nearly two weeks of the checklist, she is now tidying her room in 5 minutes before bed, having one of us parents check it and is in bed in a tidy and clean room. Bonus? With no input from either parent!! Responsibility is now on her to keep her room tidy rather than everyone in the house. With a 8 month old in the house too, this is extremely beneficial.
Want a copy of the checklist? Head to the link below for your copy!
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