We all know the feeling, you just cleaned the house and in a matter of minutes everything is a mess again. Toys, shoes and mess all over! To keep the house tidy, we need to come up with some strategy to involve our children and make them contribute.

The good thing: easy household tasks can help children to learn to take responsibility and make decisions confidently. But an U.S. research pointed that 82% of parents had  regular chores growing up, but only 28% said that they now get their own children to do them. So, to help you with this task, Helpling (http://helpling.ae), the leading online marketplace for household services in Middle East, give you some easy tips:

Order is a key factor for children’s early years
Did you step again on messy scattered Lego block and almost slipped? Don’t worry! Every child needs order and structure to learn. Learning through the active cleaning of their own room, will help children not only to stay tidy, but also to take responsibility. For example, make the little ones point out, together with you, where is the Teddy’s place in their room. So they will be more likely to remember it and will lay the stuffed animal in the right place every time before going to bed.

The biggest role model? You!
How should your children learn the best way to keep the space clean if the table is never clean after dinner or if there is a lot of pair of shoes hanging around in the hallway? Your example in the daily activities will influence your children to follow you. Moreover, for all ages: together it’s easier to clean! Children won’t admit it, but in the end, they are proud of helping the grown-ups to clean the flat or room.

Step by step tasks
Be aware and give your children age-appropriate tasks! Toddlers can help young ones to order socks – and get to play with it, organizing things by colours and patterns. For school children you can give more serious tasks: make the bed every morning and keep the desk in order. Also start making decisions together! For example, take your children to the weekly grocery shopping and involve them into the decision-making about what you to buy and afterwards cook.

Clever mobile = a room in order!
Organization starts in the room and functional decoration, ensure that your children room has enough space to place boxes and storage the toys. But caution to never put too much weight in the boxes: your children are still too small and can pull anything heavy from the shelf. You can also define a topic for each corner, just like in kindergarten: left you have the reading and cozy corner, to the right is the dress up area and in the middle can be the playground! So your children know right away what belongs where with an easy association.

Four practical cleaning tips for young and old ones:

1. Clear instructions: “Please clean up” – these words have no effect. Refine your request: “Please put the CDs back into the shelf and put the teddy to bed, now.” Your children must know exactly what to do. The more concrete your request, more effective it will be!

2. Art museum: incentive the creativity of your children! The room can be clean but doesn’t need to be sterile, after all it’s a place to play. Instead, you can determine an art space to put children’s work, so they can feel proud of their creations. For example, a place to hang the drawings or a corner with all the lego sculptures.

3. Pedantic, no thanks: remember to be not too pedantic with them, they are children after all! The goal is to take toys to a single place and avoid them to be spread all over, not to be too neat defining a specific place to each and every smallest toy. Rather, have few large boxes to place the majority of toys.

4. Rituals help: this tip is important for children and also for adults. For example, you can have everyday rules like “before dinner all things needs to be back in place”. Defining these rituals are helpful to everyone and can work well to give children a good example.

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