How To Involve Your Kids In The House Cleaning
I know what you already think when you read the headline – it won’t work on my kids. But that is actually the fundamental cause of the problem – you have already resigned to the idea that your children do not like cleaning, and you have to do all the housekeeping chores on your own. Trust me, I was there – and it was not a happy place. But now my two teenagers not only keep their respective rooms in order – they take part in the house and garden cleaning and do the dishes as well.
How did I achieve this feat? Let me tell you my story!
Start Early
In the interest of full disclosure – I have been a professional cleaner for over fifteen years. If you think, however, that this is an advantage, you are sadly mistaken. Yes, I do know how to clean a kitchen or a bathroom much more efficiently and faster than a regular housewife. But the last thing I want to do is to bring my work at home. And since you cannot really escape from cleaning, that was what I had to do for a while.
My daughter was born eighteen months before I became a professional house cleaner in South West London, and my son – two and a half years later. My husband worked, and still does, in construction – so we both had to navigate through long shifts and the duties at home. He is very handy at keeping things in order – you know, repairing stuff, building a fence in the garden, constructing a small playground for the children in the backyard. But he is hopeless when it comes to cleaning, so even with the best intentions, he would be more of a disaster than help.
Which brings me to my first point – if you spoil your kids early, do not expect them to help you later. I made it a quick point to the kids that if they wanted to play, they would have to gather their toys afterwards. The crucial test came with a large Lego construction kit that their grandmother bought for my daughter’s seventh birthday. By this time, Vickie had learnt the rules well, but her brother proved more willful. One time he started building a house but stopped midway and came running to the kitchen, looking for a snack. Alex did not see any reason to put the Lego blocks back in their box, and when I told him to do so, he refused. That was the last time he touched the construction kit for a month. After finding out that his temper tantrums did not make much of an impression, Alex realised the only way to play with the Lego again is to clean up the mess afterwards.
It was the first step in a long process of housekeeping education. Putting the Lego blocks back in the box turned into keeping their rooms in order, dusting the shelves, and even vacuum cleaning (for some unexplainable reason Alex finds it very funny and amusing). By the time my kids were ten and twelve, respectively, they were helping me with the majority of the chores at home. As you may notice, the decisive factor here was the starting age. If you have a fifteen-year-old teenager who hasn’t done a single chore in their life, convincing them to start all of a sudden is a lost cause.
There Must Be A Carrot As Well
You cannot only use negative motivation – if you do not clean your room you are grounded, I will take your phone away, you cannot play with your friends, and so forth. You have to create a positive alternative that will not only convince your kids to help with the chores, but they start doing it willingly. In my case, it was “chocolate money”. Let’s say I wanted to do a thorough cleaning overhaul of the house and made a list of the chores. The sibling that helped me with the greater number of the tasks would get 20 pounds for chocolate, sweets, snacks – whatever they chose. To be fair, cleaning came more naturally to Vickie, but as Alex began to grow up and become stronger than his sister, he could help me with moving stuff around. Soon they were engaged in a real competition of who would do the better job – to my Macciavelian delight. But the real benefit was that they began to consider cleaning or laundry or doing the dishes as an integral part of their daily routine, not a one-time accident.
Treat Them As Adults
As my kids grew older and became teenagers, I found this to be the most effective way to involve them in the home cleaning process. Let’s be honest – nobody likes cleaning (I do it for a living, but that doesn’t change the fact). Do not try to convince your kids that it is a pleasant or important part of their life – because it is not. But it is necessary – and this is the crux of the matter. Growing up means that you will do unpleasant and dull things just because they are required, and you should expect nothing in return.
One of my great moments of parental satisfaction came on a regular day after I came back from work exhausted. I had some laundry to do, and it was the day I usually cleaned the kitchen drawers. Vickie new all that and saw that I was drained, so she said: “Listen, Momster (which, as she loves to point out, it is a combination of Mom and monster), how about you relax a bit, and I will do the laundry, and the weirdo (a.k.a her brother) will do the drawers.” There she was, my sixteen-year-old daughter, offering to do a chore expecting nothing in return, not because I told her to – because of a genuine desire to help.
You do not have to be a dictator or rob a bank to achieve it – don’t spoil your kids, reward them when they do a good job, and when they are old enough – treat them as adults. If the recipe has worked for me, I am sure it will work for you as well!