Clean House for Kids

A friend of mine asked recently how I keep the house clean and manage to homeschool with six kids at home. The first part of the answer is that I clean my house, but I don't keep the house clean. After being a mother for more than ten years I've come to realize that, just like most things, managing a house full of children must be approached seasonally. So I take the long view of things.

The reality is that there is something out of place most of the time with moments of nearly perfect cleanliness every now and then. There are some ways to make a tidy house more of a possibility even with kids running around messing things up.

1. Declutter. You knew I was going to say it. Its impossible to realistically clean a room with 5,000 stuffed animals in it. Decluttering your space leads to decluttering your mind and your life. Keep your home simple, especially bedrooms. If an item doesn't have a home, it belongs in the trash. Don't just make war on your kid's spaces, be an honest person and lead by example.

2. Clean Daily. Make a realistic cleaning schedule that includes all members of the family. Keep kid's chores simple and able to be completed in a matter of minutes. Remember that before the age of 8 or so your little "helpers" aren't so helpful. Start with a training phase. Show them how to do it, and leave them to it. Don't loiter and hang around to make sure they clean the toilet correctly. Come and check when they are done, give some praise and some pointers. Keep in mind the last time you were the new guy and be kind. Keep the chore list consistent. Changing things up every day or week will only complicate things and frustrate the kids. I give my kids a month with a certain chore so they have sufficient time to master it and become familiar with the level of clean we are going for.

3. Clean Weekly. Honestly, after the kids clean their bedrooms on Saturday morning, I give them the rest of the day off. Saturday is the day I actually clean all the spaces they tackled during the week (bathrooms, kitchen floor, playroom cleanup). That way we start Sunday out righteously with a genuinely clean house.

In our house we take our studies by storm and are usually done before noon. Short, sweet, and to the point is how we roll. We change pace over the summer to make more time for outside play, but we don't stop altogether. I find this schedule to make the happiest children and saves my summertime sanity. I don't have a particular time of day for chores, just as long as they are completed by dinner.

No day goes off without a hitch, and my chore list is everlasting, but making daily decisions based on the big picture helps me to enjoy life so much more. People matter infinitely more than things and that includes having a clean house. The whole point of any of this is to train up bright, responsible, good-hearted, hardworking adults. The house doesn't matter, but for them.