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Cleaning Tips for Families

Just the thought of introducing the entire family to some regular chores might make you laugh. However, here, we have assembled some cleaning tips and advice to not only get them to fulfill their tasks but understand why they need to help out.

From the outset the subject needs to be handled gently or else you could end up with a teenage (or even marital) mutiny. Suggest all sitting down and making lists of the jobs you each feel need doing at home. Obviously, as the parent this will mainly be you telling them all of the jobs you try and cram into each day, but bear with us, this gentile approach will pay off trust us. Try to include meal preparation as well as tasks throughout the home and garden. There are sure to be aspects in all of these areas that your children can help with, however young they are.

When you are creating this list, and before turning it into something more easily understandable ensure your family know that the rota is not punishment, but in fact, their input to the running and looking after of their home will result in more time as a family to spend doing cool stuff. Also keep in mind that your family will most likely contain a mixture of personalities from highly strung cleanoholics (you) to more laid back plodders who are comforted by a bit of a mess (the kids). Your rota needs to strike a balance between your ideal and theirs or again, they will become disengaged with it.

If you schedule some small tasks everyday this will mean you won’t have a ‘heavy’ cleaning day and also that your entire weekends won’t be swallowed up trying to get the numerous loads of washing done before the following busy week.

Once you have all drawn up and agreed the rota, display it somewhere central where everyone can check it. If you use a white board and dry wipe pens you can all tick jobs off as you do them, giving everyone a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.

Your kids will most likely never enjoy cleaning but it doesn’t hurt to try and make it bearable. Some tactics could be do play music in the house to cheer everyone up. You could allow different people to choose on different days, if they will moan about your choices.

You could also give them their own products according to their tasks. Children love having their own belongings and equipment, so as long as they can use them responsibly and carefully trust them to find and use their own products.

Do you want to introduce any other reward schemes, such as friends coming over or pocket money on a monthly or weekly basis. Some count this as bribery, however, as parents you are supposed to teach children to work as a team, take care of possessions and to work for nice things, so maybe this could be the perfect way to kill all of these birds with one easy stone, well rota.