Always use, (so therefore encouraging your children) to use, a calendar for your commitments and any family birthdays or anniversaries. Wall planners are good as you can see at a glance what you have planned without having to flick through pages. Provide support and encouragement in your child's efforts to become more organised by helping them plan checklists and taping them up where they are easily accessible. Give gentle reminders to your child to enter things on his or her calendar and don't nag, but gently persuade them to keep their rooms tidier.
Finally, encourage good habits by letting your children help you with your own chores and always reward for a job well done. If your kids have at least tried to keep things tidy, you should let them know how you have noticed this with a reward and encouragement to do it again the next time.
7 Tips to Make Cleaning Fun for the Whole Family
Cleaning games motivate children from TV viewing to chores
(ARA) - Did you know there is a direct correlation between watching more than four hours of TV a day and obesity? There is a solution. Now, you can break your children's television habit, help them stay healthy, and get a clean house all by making chores fun.
The best way to fight obesity is aerobic activity. THE MAIDS, one of the nation's foremost maid services, has found that many cleaning activities double as aerobic exercise. In fact, vacuuming can burn as many as seven calories a minute! So, the solution to combating obesity and a dirty house-enlist your children's help with chores.
You say your children won't trade the remote for a mop? Make cleaning a game. The following tips will sweep your children off the couch and into cleaning:
1) Musical Chores: Designate a project (dusting, scrubbing the floor, picking up toys) to each child and start the music. Every time the music turns off, the children switch chores.
2) Mow the Carpet: Young children can mimic what you are doing. If you're vacuuming, give them a toy lawn mower to use in the house. Then they can "mow" the carpet while you vacuum.
3) Puppet Dusters: Make sock puppets for dusting and start a contest to see whose puppet gets the dirtiest.
4) Puppet Shiners: You and your child each wear a sock puppet to clean the patio door window. You're on the outside and he/she's on the inside. Make it a game to follow one another's hand movement as you clean the window.
5) Baseboard Race: Start two children next to one another in the same room. The child that gets to the end of the room/house first wins a prize.
6) Dash for Trash: Designate a laundry basket for each child. Start a timer for 30 seconds and see which child can put the most in his/her basket before the timer goes off.
7) Hide and Seek: Hide five spoons in various spots (under cushions, on windowsills, under pillows) and see if your child can find all of them by the time he/she is finished cleaning.
By turning cleaning chores into fun and games, your kids are off the couch, helping with housework, and having fun with the family.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For more information, contact Janet Nelson, THE MAIDS International, Inc. at (800) 843-6243.
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