Training your kid's essential housekeeping phase 1

Hello everybody!! If you remember, two weeks ago I set myself a challenge to teach my kids the basics of housekeeping.

That post got such a huge response from you all. Some of you shared fantastic stories about your childhood telling me about either being trained or not being trained by your Parents. You also told me about trying to train your own children in housekeeping.

Reading the stories, I realised I had a bit of challenge on my hands and wondered for a brief second what have I got myself into, lol!!!

Once I got my brain into gear, I started to think of the complexities of housekeeping as there are many layers to it with many jobs. Some of these jobs you do daily, weekly, monthly, bi-yearly or even yearly. So how do you explain this to children from 6 to 10 years old.

The answer to that is you don’t. PHEW.

So where do you start??

The first challenge is to persuade my children to buy into cleaning and tidying.

I think at first it’s essential to make the activity fun and straightforward with you as parents being involved, helping and encouraging your child. Remember you are starting to pass on your knowledge at this point.

This brings me to the first rules of the clean club.

1. Do not monetise the job with your children.

2. You want to make this job habitual, so there is no link to money.

3. Find a time in the day/evening when an activity takes place each day. This is the time you do some housekeeping jobs. For example, just before bath time. This, over time, becomes a trigger point, so the child eventually does this cleaning activity themselves without being reminded.

4. Make it fun and straightforward.

I have started my children just picking up their toys etc., and clearing the floor space in their rooms. I have been doing this just before bath time as I don’t want them too wound up before bed. After tidying up we try to have some family time to wind down before bed.

What I have found is:

1. They didn’t want to do it at the start.

2. After a few days of tension, they accepted this was the new norm.

3. A few more days after that, although still grumbling completed the task.

This is still a working progress and I hope it will get easier as time goes on. I would love to hear your thoughts on what I have shared so far? Is it something you night try or find useful? Please share your stories with me.

If this has helped or you like this blog post, please share and tell your friends and family who may also find it useful

Let’s make the clean club a thing.

Love

Richard x