Teaching your kids to clean their room

Image via WikipediaWe all know kids are not big fans of keeping a clean room. Most think a well cleaned room involves hiding the mess instead of cleaning it. Here is an easy and organized approach.
 
Children, like many adults see a big job in front of them and naturally, they are often overwhelmed and don't know where or how to start. It is important to break large jobs down into easily manageable tasks that can give them a sense of accomplishment as they go.
Try to make the job fun and challenging. Start off small and have the child pick up all hard objects on the floor and put them on their dresser. Getting these things up and out of the way is a big help at being able to see what all needs doing. Hard objects are pens, toys, pencils, crayons, books, video games etc.
Now there will likely be paper, and clothing on the floor next, have them to gather up all important papers and put them in another out of the way area. It really doesn't matter where, as long as it is in a pile. Important papers would be things like homework, drawings, etc.
Get out a trash bag or container and tell them we are going to throw away whatever paper items is left on the floor. Go through any drawers, and closets/toy chests in this whole process. Make sure to include them in on the process of discarding. It gives them a sense of control and also gives you an idea as to what sort of things they place value on. This gets removed and out of the way.
Start organizing the piles that have been established and have containers and spaces dedicated to them. Remaining dirty clothes now go either in the laundry room or hamper. Piles of important papers go into baskets, plastic storage bins, or where ever you think they are easy to find and keep out of the way. All the toys now go into a toy box, cardboard box or some sort of storage area.
Now that all the major components of the mess has found a proper place/container to be, its on to making the bed, and lastly vacuuming the floor. Kids feel proud they did a good job, and you are teaching them organizational skills in the process. Small tasks done in order all add up to one big job well done, but they seem less overwhelming this way. You will have to do this for some time to come with your youngster but in the end you will teach them to look at all large tasks and know how to break them down into smaller ones. This is a great lifelong skill to have.