Guest Post: Minimal effort kids room cleaning and organizing tips

The following is a guest post by Emma Hamilton. 

Every parent knows that having kids simply means mess. You clean their room for ages and only after a few hours there isn’t any trace of your efforts. The only way to make this result last longer is only if your children help you. Many parents struggle to convince their children to maintain their room clean and tidy. No matter the age, this task has proven to be very difficult. Cleaning is always viewed as nothing but a tedious household chore. No amount of threats can change their mind. However, there is still hope. You can find out very useful tips in the next paragraphs.

There are a few things that we need to take into account if we want to succeed in our enterprise. First, we need to consider our children’s age. For children still at primary school, it will be most beneficial if we can transform the cleaning routine into a game. You can tell them that if they tidy their room regularly, you will fulfill one of their wishes once a month. This is an easy way as it will keep them occupied for a long period of time. Make sure, you explain to them how they will benefit, if they follow your rules. If your children are older, you can talk to them regarding this matter. You can try different strategies and see what works best for your children.

No matter how old our kids are, we know that usually we are the ones that end up doing the cleaning. In order to minimize your efforts the most, you need to create your own system. Organization is an absolute must, if you want to save time when cleaning your kid’s room. Divide your children’s clothes into different categories and put them in separate departments. This way, every time you fold them, it will be easier to find where to place them.

Buy or create beautiful boxes where your children can store all of their toys. Show them how to do it sufficiently and teach them to follow this routine. The reason for this is that every time you want to hoover their room, there are lots of items on the floor that slow you down. If all the toys are gathered beforehand, you will save a significant amount of time and efforts. Moreover, they won’t collect any dirt and dust.

Another useful thing is to place all the needed cleaning detergents and equipment nearby. You can hide them in a convenient for you place. A lot of people are put off only from the thought of cleaning. The reason behind this is that they have to go back and forth in order to collect all of the needed cleaning supplies. When everything is nearby and organized, Carpet Cleaning SW London guarantees you will manage to clean quickly.

In general, cleaning is very time consuming. Sometimes, it can take ages, especially if we have to clean the kid's room. You spend endless efforts and the result at the end is just not satisfactory. Don’t do this anymore. Be organized and work efficiently. Get everyone in the family involved. Explain to them that cleaning provides us a healthy environment and a good quality of the air. You can ask them for any suggestions how to improve the cleaning routine. You might be surprised by the answer as kids are very imaginative and can give you some great ideas. Listen to your children and make a change. Work as a team, this is the only possible way if you want every room to be tidy and neat.

A new and improved school room!

My friend Angelica has a real gift for decorating. She is actually considering getting her Interior Design certificate. I started talking to her on my trip about how frustrated I am by our new house.

Don't get me wrong. I think our house is beautiful from the outside, and when anyone walks in, they love the look of the vaulted ceiling on the inside. It has a lot of character.

But so many things are just not working for me in this house. Angelica and I looked at some videos and pictures and did a lot of brainstorming, and she gave me some ideas of how I could make the school room better.

Her advice:

1. Remove some furniture
2. Utilize my shelves/storage better
3. Take advantage of the hall closet for storage

So that is what I did. For two hours, the morning after I got home from my trip I worked to put her suggestions into action.

And while it isn't perfect, I really like how much better things are. Check out my before and after videos:

Books, books everywhere!

Oh how I could relate to this post about books taking over the house!

We LOVE books in our house. But now that the boys are getting older, we have books for Abigail AND books for them. And of course, there are all the baby books that are waiting for Hannah to get old enough to read.

(I won't even go into the library full of books in JB's office. They are contained there. So I'm fine with that.)

And when it comes to me and books, I am very good about it. If it is not a book I plan to read again, I easily let it go. Just like the author of the linked article, I am very good at purging them. My favorite thing to do with them is: PaperBackSwap — "not only because it saves money, but also because it’s a great way to keep your book collection under control. Why? Because you can’t earn book credits unless you get rid of some of your books." I am especially happy because paperback recently allowed for APO shipping (so I don't have to route them through my mom anymore!)

But the kid books? They are everywhere. At least weekly, I'll sit down in front of a shelf and try to pick some to purge. Inevitably, I stack them up, and then those are the books that the kids dive into and want to read for the week! Seriously?

The author of this article's has three tips:

1. Define your book boundaries. (Choose how many shelves you'll have and if you go over -- purge!)
2. Only keep your absolute favorites. (This is what is so hard for me when it comes to kids books -- it truly seems like every book is their favorite for a time. And when you have kids of various ages and various sexes, the challenge gets stronger.)
3. Swap/sell or bless others with your extras. (Use sites like paperbackswap.com to make you feel like you are getting something out of the deal.)

Okay readers. So let me have 'em. What are your best tips for keeping your book collections under control?

Good Bye Cubbies ... Hello Sparks

Last school year, my boys participated in Awanas.  I knew relatively nothing about this when we got started, but my great friend Carla was heading it up, and it sounded like something our family would value. We decided to go for it. 

What is Awanas? Here it is, explained, from their website.

Awana helps churches and parents work together to develop spiritually strong children and youth who faithfully follow Jesus Christ. Our programs offer a proven approach for evangelizing and discipling kids in the church and community.

As a ministry leader for over 60 years, Awana is making an impact. A national survey found Awana to be as important to our alumni's spiritual foundation as all other church activities combined. Among alumni who participated in our programs for at least six years, 92.7 percent still attend church at least weekly as adults!

Each week, more than two million kids ages 2 to 18 participate in Awana. This includes more than 1.1 million in 102 countries outside of the U.S., the most children that Awana has ever reached internationally.

JB and I have really made it a point to prioritize and limit activities outside of the home. Our boys have not participated in any sports, at least yet, and we really contemplate the consequences of giving away an evening outside the home. We decided that Awanas would be the ONE activity we would do. Tuesday evenings were not easy. It meant eating dinner early and getting the kids in bed late. But we thought that one night a week was worth it.

My boys LOVED Cubbies. They aren't in school so having some time with their friends coupled with snack time and game time and store night (where they can use their "Awanas Bucks" to buy cool stuff) was a huge highlight of their week. They couldn't wait to start the program again this year. 

As a way to keep myself organized and limit clutter (I am a person who is very organized and craves this organization), I have attempted to scan into my computer any of my kids coloring sheets and other "only emotional" documents. Right now I am quite a bit behind due to the difficult pregnancy year I had. But I hope to soon catch up. This scanning means I can throw items away without guilt! Here is a scanned copy of the front of their Awana book from last year (which I scanned before throwing their books in the trash.)

What I will always remember about these books was that the boys wouldn't take a picture by themselves. They insisted on taking a picture together so the teacher had to cut the photo and split it between both of their books.

Technically, Cubbies is for kids younger than kindergarten. The next grade level -- Sparks -- is for grades K-2. We debated, as summer ended and a new Awanas year got set to begin, where to put the boys. I talked it over with my buddy Carla (now tanning it up in Hawaii) and the new Awanas leader, Karen. We knew we wanted to keep the boys together. But the boys have not started kindergarten. (Isaac is old enough for kindergarten, but we are holding him back a year since he is a May birthday.)

We decided to put the boys in the K-2 class. The first night, I knew we had made the right decision. The Cubbies looked so small at ages 3-5. And while Sidge is young, he is H-U-G-E. (He's bigger than most six-year-olds). He is also very excited about learning, pays good attention, asks tons of questions, and answers them as well.

So Awanas is in full swing. My boys are in Sparks. They'll have red vests to put their patches on and will be the youngest in their class. It is my hope that wherever we go next, they will have the opportunity to continue participating in this great program. 

An Epiphany Folding Laundry

I didn't write this article (below). I found it online -- on our MOPS.ORG website. But I love it. And I could have written it. Nearly every word. I am organized person. LOVE to be organized. But in the midst of that, some things just have to slide. It has to be okay to take short cuts. What shortcuts do you say are a-okay to take? Here are my favorites: Burp cloths go in a big basket in the laundry room -- unfolded. JB's boxers, my underwear, kids underwear, and all socks do not have to be matched when put away. I do match Abigail's (because I will have to anyways to put them on her) but the boys are now old enough to find their own matches! I have the boys help me with anything and everything now. I put dishes that they use where they can reach them. I place the cereal at their level. Their shoes are in the hallway where they can put them away. They pick out their own clothes and put dirty clothes in the laundry. Anything that is "helpable" I let them help with. I don't iron really ... anything. If it's a tad wrinkled -- oh well. If I have to iron it, I do ... a little. But I have never ironed any of the kids' clothes. A little wrinkled is cute. Don't you think? (Okay, maybe not. But you get the idea.) The kids' clothes are sorted and stored in the laundry room. This saves a trip with all the clothes upstairs and back downstairs again. They stay downstairs. This has been a brilliant move on my part (an idea I stole from the Duggars family) -- but of course you need a laundry room that is big enough to handle this and a house that requires it as well.  A housekeeper (aka "not-just-for-doctor's-wives-anymore) -- stay tuned. I am prepping for a big soap box story on this soon! I keep a toothbrush for me and the kids in all the bathrooms so that we don't have to be in a certain place to get the job done. I also keep extra soap and shampoo in the downstairs shower in case I get a moment to take a shower but don't want to have to do it upstairs. The thing I am most working on that I took from this story below is that this is MY house -- it needs to work for me. Who cares if that jar of pens is in an obnoxious place. It doesn't matter. You need to put stuff where you need them. Period. It's your house. It has to be a lived-in house. By: Wendy Soberg Several years ago I found myself in a familiar spot, sitting on the couch in a sea of clean laundry covering the living room furniture. I was folding my 3- and 4-year-old daughters' tiny underwear and balancing them onto a precarious pile. As the pile grew, thoughtful adjustments were needed in how the panties were placed, lest the pile topple and my hard work come undone. Then all of a sudden it hit me: I do not have to fold the panties. Or anyone else's underwear, for that matter. My mother had always folded our underwear neatly when I was growing up. But, really, why not toss them into the bureau drawer, close it, and be no worse for the wear? I remember this moment because it marks one of my first conscious decisions to make life simpler after my children came along. The 24/7 nature of caring for the demands of a family, home, and part-time career left little time or energy for serious examination of my routines and habits. Sitting there in the laundry pile, tossing panties into my basket, I felt fantastic. I was buying back precious minutes for things that were more important to me than how neat the girls' underwear drawer looked. I was energized. Eager to share this news mom-to-mom, I called an old friend and fellow mother of toddlers. "I've decided to stop folding the girls' panties and do things that are more important to me," I said, to which she replied, "You still fold your laundry?" She and her husband had decided long ago that the family's laundry could go directly from dryer to drawer with no stops in between. While I couldn't commit to her "whole hog" approach to the laundry, I was determined to find other ways I could simplify and make things more manageable. Soon I found an opportunity. I began to notice myself walking around the house delivering items like toys, hair clips, books, laundry, and mail to places that always seemed to be somewhere other than where I was currently standing. While that is one way rack up steps on a pedometer, I found it irritating. About that time, a certified professional organizer came to our local MOPS group. “Don't try to make your home look like something out of a magazine,” she advised. “Store things where you use them, even if it is less stylish, so you locate things quickly and stop wandering around your house wasting time.” This time, I was all in. We bought shelves and stored our children's toys right in our living room rather than carrying them back to the "play room" our kids never used. I tossed washcloths and towels (unfolded, of course) in a kitchen drawer to quickly wipe up milk spills and gooey faces. Our desk moved close to the kitchen where we could drop the mail on it easily and pay bills while the kids played. I bought duplicates of cleaning supplies and toiletries to fully stock each bathroom. And, the ubiquitous barrettes and ponytail holders got homes pretty much everywhere, so they could be tossed in and pulled out at the drop of a hat. To be sure, the rapid transition to family life sometimes catches us by surprise, and our old routines and habits don't always support our new requirements. If the answer to the question "Why am I doing X?" is "that's what my mom did" or "that's what we've always done," it might be time for a change. After all, my grandmother used to iron her sheets. I've just stopped folding the panties.