Keeping Your Home Clean and Tidy With Young Kids

Many of us feel happier in a clean and tidy home. When you have young kids, you need to accept that they will create a mess – whether it’s toys, food or bodily fluid. You can’t keep on top of it all, however you don’t have to let your home become a complete dump. Here are just a few tips for keeping your home clean and tidy with young kids.

Give each toy a home

If toys don’t have a home, they’re going to end up all over the house. Storage baskets and toy chests are a great way to contain toys when they’re not being played with. They’ll teach your kids that toys need to be stored somewhere after playtime. It may also make it easier to limit toys to certain areas of the house.

Supervise messy play

When it comes to pens, paints, playdough, Lego, puzzles or other toy sets with lots of small parts, make sure that you are present to supervise. This can prevent things getting too messy. Laying down a towel, a sheet or newspapers beforehand could also keep messy to play to a certain area.

Find easy-clean solutions for marks and stains

Sometimes you will end up with pen marks on the walls or yoghurt all over the carpet. In such cases, it could be worth looking online to learn easy-clean tricks. There are even tricks for removing permanent pen marks – this guide can help you to learn more about removing sharpie. You could even consider home upgrades such as painting the walls with scrubbable paint or switching your carpets to wooden flooring in order to make cleaning easier.

Schedule time for laundry every day

Laundry is the bane of every parent’s life. Infants and toddlers get through clothes quickly and this can cause the laundry to pile up rapidly. Schedule time each day for putting a new load on, drying wet clothes and putting away dry clothes. There’s nothing worse than leaving it a week and then having to waste half a day washing and putting away laundry. 

Find ways to keep kids distracted while you clean

Young kids may try to get under your feet while cleaning or may try to seek attention, which can make cleaning even more of a chore. Find a reliable way of distracting them – only you will know what will work with your child. Baby bouncers and playpens can be useful for infants. As for toddlers, you may find that putting on their favourite TV programme or letting them watch kids videos on Youtube on a tablet works. 

Encourage your kids to help you clean up

As early as 2 years old, kids can be taught to clean up after themselves. This could include putting away toys after playing with them or even helping to put trash in the bin. There may be creative ways in which you can make clean-up time fun such as counting down and making it a race or playing music and having a dance while cleaning.