Simple is always the name of the game around here. When you’re a busy mom simple is the best. And when you’re trying to teach your children how to clean up, simple is the only way to go. That’s why I’m sharing with you these 5 simple ways to help children learn how to clean.

Teaching your kids how to clean can be stressful at times. It’s hard. It takes them 100 times longer than it would take you. And, they’re not very good at it. But, giving your children this life skill is a must to help them become a successful human being. And I promise, the older they get, it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. 

So take a deep breath and a big dose of patience, and use these 5 simple ways to help children learn how to clean. These three key ingredients will make the process a little easier. And the end result is all worth the hours of patience. 🙂

Why is it necessary to teach our kids how to clean?

Kids don’t inherently know how to clean. Yes, when they’re young they tend to mimic us and learn from us. But mimicking doesn’t quite get the job done here. It is absolutely the perfect place to start, but we can’t just think our children should know how to clean because they’ve seen us do it. We have to walk along beside them and teach them.

This applies to small children and older children. Perhaps you didn’t require your children to clean up much when they were younger, and now that they’re older you expect to be able to tell them “go clean your room” and they do it. But if they’ve never been taught how they won’t just automatically know how to do it. Even if you think they should be able to at their age. 

Teaching our children isn’t a one-time or one season thing. As our children get older, they should be able to take on more responsibility and harder cleaning tasks. As they grow, we have to teach them how to do those chores correctly. Again, they don’t automatically know how. However, this post is about the beginning stages, how to get them started with learning how to clean.

5 Simple Ways to Help Children Learn How to Clean

These tips are geared towards younger children (older toddlers – early elementary). However, if you’ve never required your children to do chores, this is a great place to start, no matter their age. I’m not even joking. If you’re an adult and you get overwhelmed by the mess in your house, try out some of these tips for yourself!

1. Clean up as soon they’re done playing

The best way to stay on top of things is to not let them get a big mess to begin with. We can do this with our children by having them clean up whatever they just finished playing with before moving on to the next thing. When they’re young toddlers this means cleaning up with them. At first you do have to be on top of your children and very consistent in helping them accomplish this so later on it will be a habit, and they’ll do it on their own (possibly even without being told).

I know, with toddlers this can feel impossible. They mostly enjoy destroying anything in their path and throwing things off of shelves more than actually playing. One way to help keep this at bay is to limit their access to toys. Forego the toy box and even the cute cubby shelves with all of their toys. 

Instead, keep the majority pf toys out of their reach and bring them down for them to play with one at a time. Perhaps keep larger toys out for easy reach and keep the smaller items like blocks, kitchen accessories, magnetic tiles, etc out of reach. Another suggestion is to rotate toys. Have some out for a while (say 2-3 months), then put those away and pull out others you had stored away in the closet. Then the next time you bring those first toys out it’s like they have a brand new toy! Not only does this help with clean up (less stuff means less mess), it also keeps them more interested in playing with their toys.

2. Hula hoop method

Let’s say you’re like me when my kids were younger, and it didn’t even cross your mind to do #1 above, and now your children’s room is a disaster. Especially for younger children, it can be overwhelming to hear “go clean your room”. They walk into a mess of a room, and they don’t even know where to start, and so usually they don’t.

Place a hula hoop somewhere in their room and instruct them to clean up only the items inside the hula hoop. Once that’s done, move the hula hoop to a different location.

Only focusing on a small area instead of the entire room makes cleaning up much more manageable.

3. Laundry basket method

This one works great for picking up the living room or other areas of the house. You, as the parent, make a quick walk through the house with an empty laundry basket. Pick up all items belonging to your child. Then ask your child to put away the items in the basket. If you have multiple children, you may want multiple laundry baskets.

4. Be very specific with your instructions

No matter what age your child, you’re going to get the best result out of them when you are very specific with your instructions. Even for my teenage daughter, when I need to remind her to do her laundry, it works best if I include ALL the instructions from start to finish. Wash your laundry, put it in the dryer, fold and put away. Not so much because she doesn’t know how, but so that expectations are clear and we both have the same understanding. And there’s no room for “well I did my laundry, you didn’t say I had to put it away”. 

For younger children this is even more beneficial. Back to the “being overwhelmed by too much to clean up”, you can help avoid the overwhelm by being specific. Instead of saying, “go clean up your toys”, say, “go clean up all the cars in your room.” Once all the cars are picked up you can move on to the blocks, and then the dinosaurs, and so on. 

This works for any part of the house. Take the dishwasher for example. For younger ones, instruct them to put away the silverware first, and then move onto something else. Even for older ones that should know how to complete the task at hand, be specific so expectations are clear on the front end. This helps avoid frustration on the back end.

5. 10 minute clean up before bed

This is a new favorite for my family (okay, at least it is for me). You can also read about it here. Just before bed, we all take 10 minutes to do a quick pick up around the house. I hand out a chore to each person, set the timer for 10 minutes, and we all get to work, mom and dad included. When we all do it together this helps the kids stay motivated to do a good job and to get as much done in 10 minutes as we can. You may be surprised what you can get done in 10 minutes! And then the house feels ready for a fresh, clean start the next morning. 

Sure, maybe there are still messy areas in your house. But I promise, no matter how messy your home, if you’ll implement this 10-minute hack, it will make a world of difference. Focus on just one area all together if need be (I suggest a main living area), and you can all make a big impact in that 10 minutes. 

A little bonus that will make a huge impact

Teaching kids how to clean is the first step. But then you move on to turning them into chores that your children are responsible for completing. To help with the chore area, once they’re capable of completing a task, a chore chart is a HUGE help. A chore chart helps kids learn responsibility, it helps them remember, and it can be a fun incentive to get things done. It often times makes this whole cleaning thing a little easier.

That’s why I’ve created a fun and engaging chore chart for you and your kids! This chart comes with 30 chore cards with illustrations in 5 different colors, corresponding tickets, and blank chore cards for you to create your own.

You can grab your Illustrated Chore Chart here.

I hope these 5 simple ways to help children learn how to clean have given you some ideas that you can implement in your own home. It takes some patience, especially at first, but I promise, it’s totally worth it. You got this mama!

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