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Category: cleaning

9 Tips for Keeping Kids Rooms Clean

This post on keeping kids rooms clean is sponsored by The Good Stuff and Coupons.com.

If you’ve got a whole house to keep clean weekly, you know how just a few good tips can drastically alter your workload. With kids in the house, that cleaning task can sometimes seem insurmountable, but by utilizing these nine tips for keeping rooms clean, you’ll be relaxing with your feet kicked up in a clean house in no time.

You may also enjoy these articles:
How to Clean Quietly
DIY Chore Jars for Kids
When Kids Refuse to Clean

Along with these tips, spending a little time making some efficiency and organization changes to your home can also help shorten the time your family spends cleaning your home each week.

Get Your Kids Involved

While sometimes it may be tempting to simply clean the room as you see fit, rather than trying to cajole your junior family members, getting the kids involved from the very beginning is key. After all, it is their room, and getting buy-in from the start will only help down the road.

Giving them ownership over how their room is to be organized can help inspire them to keep the clutter at bay. If nothing else, they will know where you expect their items to be kept when not in use.

Let Them Take the Lead

Instead of trying to make decisions for your kids as far as what stays and what goes, give them the opportunity to share their vision with you. Letting them tell you about what their thoughts allows you to get a window into their world. You can then start to speak their language, giving them the sense that you are there to help.

Everything in its Place

Simply telling kids to “put something away” can imply a negative tone, and it also isn’t a definite instruction. Instead, personalize everything. Give everything in your child’s room a “home,” or place where it will live. When things are out-of-place, asking your kids to put something where it lives is a more positive and fun way of saying “clean up this mess.”

Give Them Control of Their Domain

When clearing the clutter, you may be tempted to interject and force them to hold on to certain items. A special gift, something sentimental, etc. However, having too much stuff in their room can be positively overwhelming for kids. Imagine being asked to keep a room full of stuff you don’t want and keep it organized, and you begin to get the picture. Instead, kids need to be given the ability to say what stays and what goes.

Get On Their Level

As adults, it’s not a problem to organize things wherever we find space. However, that strategy doesn’t always work for smaller people. It’s important for them to be able to access things easily and see where they are at a moment’s glance. That’s why it’s important to start at ground level and work your way up. Having organization spaces close to floor level gives your kids easy access to their things, and it also makes it easier for them to get them put away.

Keep Things Consistent

When your kid gets to school, chances are they are being asked to store their things in their cubby. So, recreate that experience at home with their own in-room cubbies.

Mirroring what happens at school can help reinforce keeping things in their place. If you put them by the door to their room, it also helps create a drop-zone where things can be put as soon as they enter their room, before they even have a chance to clutter.

Make a Game of It

Kids love games and can turn almost anything into a competition. Try to develop a fun routine in regards to cleaning and organizing rooms. A “Clean Room Club,” or counting backwards from ten as ten items are put away can also make the experience of keeping a room clean more fun.

Create Boundaries

Your child’s room is their space inside the home, so it needs to be as functional for them as possible. If the size of their room allows it, you should strive to make separate spaces within that room. There will be a temptation when organizing to move tables to walls and open up as much floor space in the middle of the room as possible. However, that lends itself to clutter.

Show Them the Way

When it comes to finding their way in the world, often children mirror the behavior of their parents. If clutter in your home isn’t a problem confined just to your kids’ rooms, it may be helpful to look in the mirror at some of your own behaviors. Take a good look at how you choose to organize your life, and apply some of the same tips we’ve gone over here to your own space inside the home.

July 27, 2019
Spring Clean Your Carpet
I received Carbona Carpet Cleaner in exchange for my honest thoughts. All opinions here are my own.

Carpets, whether you love them or hate them, most homes have at least one room with carpet. We have exactly one room in our home, and it happens to be the room we hang out in the most.

Since so much time is spent in our living room, the wear on the carpet is almost always visible – unless we cover it up with toys, which is frequent. I’ve been pretty decent at vacuuming it weekly, but let’s be honest, with 5 kids and plenty of visitors in and out – a vacuum isn’t the only thing I should be doing on a weekly basis.

From drink spills to muddy shoes, there are spot all over my carpet that make me not love it. So it’s time to spring clean it, and then put better habits into place to keep it cleaner. I brainstormed with my sister-in-law Renee, and this is what we came up with. I hope some of the advice helps you out!

Spring Clean your Carpets

When you initially decide to do a spring cleaning of the carpets, it’s going to be a deep clean. Start by
1. Remove everything that doesn’t belong, and get as much off the carpet as you can. If possible, move big furniture into another room temporarily.
2. Once everything is moved out that can be, give it a good vacuum. I like my Eureka! vacuum both for the price and the good job it does.
3. With a surface cleaning done, it’s time to pull out the heavy duty tools. Years ago we purchased a heavy duty carpet cleaner, and it has been worth every penny. But if you don’t have one, lots of places will rent one out for a day or so at a time.
You May Also Enjoy: 5 Places You Wouldn’t Expect to be Vacuuming.

Prevention Tips to Keep Your Carpets Clean

I’ve decided we can save ourselves a lot of work in life, if we work on preventing certain things. We have well-visits with our doctor, eat healthy, and exercise all in effort to prevent ourselves from getting sick.

Similarly if we do certain things, we can prevent our carpets from needing that deep cleaning too frequently. Try implementing some of these in your home, and see what happens.
1. When entering your home, take your shoes off. Ask guests to do the same. Have a nice bench to sit on, and/or to store the shoes in to make it easier and prettier. Or create a sign requesting shoes be removed before entering. This is common practice in other countries and can lead to a cleaner home for you – not just the carpets!
2. Keep food and drink in the kitchen, or designated eating areas. I’m really bad at this, as the whole family enjoys snacking while watching our favorite movies together. However, it can make a world of difference when little kids aren’t wiping their pizza sauce hands all over that light colored carpet.
3. Similar to food, try and keep arts and crafts to the kitchen/dining areas. Hot glue, glitter, and paint all have a tendency to get spilled at some point. They are much easier to clean off a hard floor then from your carpet.
4. If you have girls who love doing nail polish, encourage them to keep it in the bathroom or on the kitchen table. Lay out a towel for their hands, and keep the bottle of polish on it as well. Nail polish is the bane of my cleaning existence.
5. If you have pets, try to choose one that is hypoallergenic. Or if you only have a few areas of carpet, keep the animals out of those rooms. Also, be a responsible pet owner, and make sure you know how to potty train your pet, and get them outside for frequent bathroom breaks.
6. Of course if you’re really keen on keeping your carpets impeccably clean, we suggest not having a husband or kids. However, I would choose my husband and kids over a clean carpet any day. So instead try your best to get them on board!
Spot Cleaning Your Carpet

OK, so things happen. A kids going to forget to take their shoes off, your muddy dog is going to run through the house, and you may just want to relax with that pizza in front of the TV one night.

So when the spills and messes do happen, the best way to keep your carpet clean, is to not put off cleaning up the mess. You can either take 5 minutes right then, or spend a whole day letting it build up.

Carbona’s has a great spot cleaner for the carpets that I’ve begun using. With a brush applicator attached, the only extra thing you’ll need is a wet rag to rinse the soap out after it removes the stains.

I’m not ready to spend a whole day deep cleaning my carpet, even though it needs it, so instead I’ve been going around getting the larger spots with Carbona. The solution works great, and from a quick glance, you probably won’t notice that it needs a deeper clean one of these days.The one thing I would change about Carbona is the shape of the bottle. It’s not terribly ergonomic for your hands to apply and brush, but it’s not horribly uncomfortable either.

The sooner you get to the stains with Carbona, the better it works, but as you can see with my very old (who knows when this occurred) spot, it still works. Just needs a little extra elbow grease.

It’s probably pretty obvious why you should clean your carpets. No one likes walking across dirt, and the dirty it gets, the more chance of inviting unwanted guests into your home. We have one child with a dust mite allergy, so it has been increasingly important to me for his sake to have clean floors that he can play on safely.
January 15, 2019
Action Plan for Overcoming a Stretch of Illness
This post is sponsored by Clorox®, but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

January through March were some of the worst months in our house. I don’t know what happened, but one bug came in and it just wouldn’t leave. Cycling through the kids and yes even the parent. Our record for good health was being blown out of the water. I needed an action plan.

Come April, we finally all began feeling better. We started the month by heading out of the house and out of town. We needed to celebrate our good health, and let whatever may have been lurking in the home time to really go away.

I stripped the beds of their sheets before we left, and cleaned out all the leftovers and any food that could go bad before we left. I spent the night before our vacation cleaning off every surface in our kitchen – determined not to let anything sit and fester.

We’d come home to aired out beds, a sparkling kitchen, and a fridge ready to be filled with good quality foods.

Day 1 of returning home I knew I’d have to be on top of things around the house to keep our good health going strong. As soon as the car was cleaned out from the road trip, we moved on to the laundry. Two loads later, and all our trip clothes were washed!

However, living with 5 kids, the messes really started to pile up fast. Toys they hadn’t seen in a week were pulled out like long lost friends – every.single.one. Blankets were piled on beds for forts, and the experimentation going on in the sinks I try not to think about too much.

Kids will be kids, and while mine are decent at picking up after themselves, there’s always some kind of residual mess left behind. Fingerprints on the fridge, mud on the floor, and crumbs – well the crumbs are everywhere.

I wasn’t going to let our good health be ruined though. After getting back into our daily routine of being home with regular mess making agenda’s, I headed to Walmart to pick up the new Clorox® Disinfecting Wipes with Ultra Strength Blue Fibers. These 15% thicker antibacterial wipes hold more cleaning power with dual-sided blue fibers to reinforce the wipe and scrub of messes.

I use the Clorox® Disinfecting Wipes on just about every surface in our home. From the kitchen counters to the table and chairs, to the couch and all throughout the bathroom. The dual-sided cleaning action makes these scented wipes suitable and safe to use on an array of kitchen and bathroom surfaces like counters, sinks, tubs, showers, finished hardwood and sealed granite.

The grime fighting, fingerprint removing wipe helps me feel like our health will stay on the up and up. At least until a kid wipes his nose on my face…

Let’s break this down now. If you suddenly find yourself and your family sick and you just can’t shake it, follow this action plan for getting better, and staying better:

Action Plan
1. Remove all the bedding
2. Deep Clean the Kitchen
3. Clean out the fridge
4. Go on vacation, and let the mattresses air out
5. Come home and keep it clean with Clorox®
Our vacation brought us good health and a stronger family bond. We’ll keep that going by continuing to make messes, and eventually clean them up together too.

Buy New Clorox® Disinfecting Wipes with Ultra Strength Blue Fibers at Walmart
May 1, 2018
How to Clean Quietly – Tips for Silent Cleaning

How to Clean Quietly – Tips for Silent Cleaning

There are many reasons why you may need to keep the noise down when it comes to cleaning. Maybe you live in an apartment and can only clean late at night. Or perhaps you like waking up early on the weekend to get a head start on the cleaning but don’t want to wake the rest of the family up.

The main reason people feel the need to be quiet around the house is when there is a sleeping baby. The usual advice for new parents is to catch up on some sleep while your baby is sleeping, but it doesn’t quite work like that. Nap time is a precious time, a time where you can fully focus on a task with the knowledge that your baby will be fast asleep.

The one thing you don’t want to do is cut that time short by making a lot of noise. Certain cleaning tasks can be quite noisy, and today I’m going to show you some tips that should minimize the noise, and reduce the risk of waking a sleeping baby.

Related Content: What Every New Mom Needs

Catch Up On Laundry

If there’s one job that doesn’t make much noise, it’s folding laundry. If you’re anything like me, you have no problem washing and drying the laundry. It’s the endless piles of clean clothes in the laundry basket that is the problem.

Baby’s nap time is the perfect opportunity to fold and put away the mountains of laundry. It can actually be quite therapeutic, and you’ll feel a great sense of satisfaction if you manage to get through the whole pile!

The washing machine can be noisy, but you may still use it if you time it correctly. If your little one usually sleeps for an hour, you can start a washing cycle that lasts for one hour and thirty minutes. When the machine gets to the end of its cycle and the loud spinning and thudding starts you can be confident that baby will be fully awake again.

Another trick you can use is to lay some carpet underneath your washing machine. The majority of the noise is the vibrations going through the floor, and a piece of carpet will absorb most of these vibrations.

Invest in a Quiet Vacuum Cleaner

It may seem obvious to mention that one of the things you should not do if you want your baby to continue sleeping, is use the vacuum cleaner. You might be surprised to learn, however, that there is such a thing as a quiet vacuum cleaner.

Now, when I say “quiet”, I should really say “quieter”. There is no such thing as a completely silent vacuum cleaner, but there are several models available that claim to output around 50 decibels of sound. This is the same noise level as a regular conversation, so you can probably get away with vacuuming the rooms next to your sleeping child. Whether you want to risk vacuuming the same room as baby, that’s entirely up to you!

Clean Things that you Have Been Putting Off

There are a few chores around the house that need a certain amount of time to complete, and can’t be done successfully when you are watching your young child. Cleaning out the fridge is one of these tasks, and it can be done without making too much noise.

Take all the food out of the fridge, give all the surfaces a good clean, and then put the food back in an organized way. This is also a good time to dispose of any out of date food, or any food that smells a bit iffy.

Another quick and quiet job that often gets forgotten is making the beds. This is one of the best things to do when you are short of time, because it helps maintain the appearance of a clean home and will lift your mood as you go from room to room.

Having a baby is a magical time, you feel like watching their every move, even when they are sleeping! It’s a good idea to use this time to do things you normally can’t, and I hope these tips will help you to clean quietly and avoid prematurely waking a sleeping baby.

Author Sammy Dolan:
Sammy is a proud parent who loves nothing more than spending time with his family and teaching them the ways of the world. He loves writing about any topic related to home life. He currently runs the blog at Home Clean Expert.

January 23, 2018
Easy Clean Up Tips for Your Summer Parties

It’s backyard party season! I love hosting a good party during the summer months, but I really dread cleaning up after it. To the point that I started avoiding having people over. These are my top tips for an easy clean up after a backyard party – or any party!

From barbecue’s to backyard camping, outdoor movie nights to friends playing all day – there’s always something fun going on at our house in the summer. On the days in between one activity and the next, I’m left with some pretty large messes at times. I hit a point where I no longer wanted people to come over because I was burnt out from all the cleaning.

That’s no fun, though. I love having my kids friends over. I love having MY friends over. So something had to change. I had to either enjoy the cleaning, or find ways to make it easier.

Related – Cleaning Up The Outdoors

Easy Clean Up Tips

Paper Products. For the longest time I avoided paper products! I preferred to “go green”, and just clean everything. When you’re hosting parties though, that is seriously just a cleaning headache you don’t need! Paper plates, plastic cutlery, and Viva Paper towels will be your sanity saver when it comes to the after party clean up.

GET A $1.50 REBATE on VIVA PAPER TOWELS with IBOTTA

Outdoor Garbage. We recently bought a new indoor garbage can with a lid! I was wondering what to do with the old can, and realized it would be the perfect otudoor garbage can. Now whenever we have a backyard get together, I line the old can with a bag and set it somewhere convenient for everyone’s dirty plates. When the party is over, it’s a simple

Clean with Clorox and Viva. I love my Clorox+Bleach for cleaning around the house. It’s just natural to use it outside the house too. Paired with the power of Viva Paper Towels no mess is safe from being cleaned quickly and efficiently. From the tables to the doorknobs to the floor.

GET A $.75 REBATE on CLOROX with IBOTTA

Walmart Pick Up. When planning a party, we can sometimes get overwhelmed with the cleaning up before, the planning the actual party, and the after clean up. Walmart can make the whole experience easier as they carry everything I ever need for a good old summer party. With their online shopping it’s become even easier to plan ahead and be ready for gatherings all summer long.

July 1, 2017
DIY Chore Jars for Kids
I received product to review in conjunction with my Chore Jars. All opinions are my own.

UGH! Chores! and Kids! Getting the two to mesh can be quite the pain. Since implementing these Chore Jars, however, the fighting has become less, and the house just a bit cleaner.

I actually borrowed this idea for chore jars from my sister in law. I’ve been horrible at setting a routine and sticking with it. The kids knew they could get away without helping clean until I blew a gasket. Then we’d have one day of deep crazy cleaning with a crazy mom, but we’d head right back to no one but me cleaning up after that.

The chore jars keep that ugly routine at bay for the most part. One jar is filled with chores that need to be done. The other jar is where chores that are done get placed. Once all the chores have been placed in the Jobs Done jar, I replace them in the Jobs To Do jar. I’ll list out the chores for you that I use, but every home is different, and you may have different chores for your kids.
- Clean up Coat Closet
- Wash Door Knobs
- Sweep Porch
- Dust
- Wash Dishes
- Clean off Table
- Wash Walls
- Clean up Craft Area
- Gather garbage
- Wipe Down Baseboards
- Clean Out Car
- Fold Laundry
- Empty Dishwasher
- Clean Bathroom
- Sort Laundry
- Pickup Front Room
- Sweep Kitchen
- Take out Recycling
- Wash Windows
- Sweep Hall and Entry
- Wipe Down Cupboards
With my kid’s ages ranging from 10 years old to 4 years old, I was initially worried about having chores that the 4-year-old could do, but also wouldn’t be too easy for the older girls. My sister in law, of course, solved that issue as well. She used colored popsicle sticks to indicate easier chores. Since Lincoln’s favorite color is green, I indicated the chores he can do without assistance by coloring the ends with a green marker. The girls know not to pick those unless all the other chores are done.

To make your own Chore Jars here’s what you’ll need –
- A list of chores that can/should be done weekly
- Popsicle Sticks
- Permanent Marker
- Chore Jar Labels
- Cleaning Cloths
Start by cleaning your jars. This was a great way for me to test out the glass and polishing cloth from e-cloth. These rags need no cleaner, just water to work, and the glass cleaner doesn’t even need water! With 3.1 million fibers per SQ inch, chemicals aren’t needed. These make the perfect cleaning cloths for kids, so you can avoid them spraying chemicals all around the house.

Once your jars are clean, affix the cute labels I made for you with hot glue. Set aside, and start labeling your popsicle sticks. Add one chore per stick, and place in your Jobs To Do jar. Remember to mark chores that are easier for the younger crowd.

I grabbed one more quart mason jar to put the e-cloths in. With everything together in one spot, the kids have no excuse to not get their chores done. Of course, now you may be asking how I get the chores to actually get done. This is what has been working for us.

When the kids get home from school, they must first work on homework while enjoying an afterschool snack (come on, I’m not a mean mom!). After their homework and snacks are finished they must pick one chore from the jar. When they finish their chore, the rest of the evening is theirs. Periodically I incentivize the chores with an extra snack or activity. With Valentines this month I’ve included another mason jar full of chocolates next to the jars. When their chore is complete they are allowed one chocolate.

When Saturday rolls around, whatever chores are left in the Jobs To Do jar must all get done. We work together in the morning, and then the goal is to have a fun family activity in the afternoon. Somedays we don’t get that fun activity, but on a good day, and especially a good week, we try to reward the family for their hard work. My oldest has taken to asking if she can do an extra chore on weekdays to earn money. Usually, it’s for something like ice cream at lunch, or a new book from the school bookstore – each costing less than a dollar. I allow her to do this, but once again remind her she’s not allowed to pull the green sticks to earn money.

What chores would you add to my list?

Check out this Bathroom Cleaning Station for kids
February 13, 2017
Start the New Year with a Clean Air Filter
I received an air filter in exchange for this post. All opinions are my own.

It’s the New Year, but many of us are still suffering from colds, allergies, and other upper respiratory problems. If you’ve been stuck inside during the winter break with your kids, you probably know what I’m talking about.

I myself came down with a cough just before Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t until just before the New Year that it finally subsided. Now it only acts up as I go between the freezing temps outside and the warm indoors. My lungs are still adjusting to that transition this winter. Mark also had ‘the cough’ but seems to have gotten over it just after I did. It got so bad, though, and many we knew seemed to have it, that we started calling it the Indiana Croupe.

Now is the time to check your air filters! I recently found Filter Snap, and love the idea of it. Instead of me trying to remember when we changed the air filter last, I’ll only have to think about it when my new filter arrives on the doorstep. I get to choose how frequently I want to change my filter, and then it’s a set and go type of thing. My air stays clean, and there is one less thing I have to think about.

When my first filter arrived, I had Mark show me how to change it. This has to be the easiest thing to change ever. I mean I thought changing the car air filter was a breeze, our home filter has it beat. I originally thought I’d be giving you a DIY on how to change your air filter today, but it’s just too easy.
- Locate your furnace.
- Open it up.
- Remove old filter.
- Replace with the new filter.
- Close the furnace.
Say what?! If you still need help, send me a pic of your furnace and I’ll walk you through it from there. I promise you can’t mess this up, even if you are the kind who usually calls others to help you. I’ve been in your shoes, I just happened to marry a very handy husband who teaches me cool things like this.

Guess what, I’m going to leave you with one more piece of home cleaning advice today. Whenever you change your filter, take a walk around the house and look at all your air vents too. This is a great time to give them a good dusting. I personally prefer to use my vacuum with the brush attachment. This makes sure that all the dust collecting on them is sucked out of the vent instead of dropping into your air system.

How often do you change your air filter?

The recommended length is every 3 months. However, if you have more than one pet or severe allergies it is suggested to change it closer to every 1-2 months. On the flip side, if you own a vacation home, your filter only needs to be changed every year. That’s what makes Filter Snap another awesome company because you set how often you receive your new filter. They have options from every 1, 2, 3, 6, and 12 months!
January 10, 2017
Enjoy the Simple Moments this Holiday with Clean Floors from Bona

Christmas is coming and the halls have been decked. Our tree is up, the lights are coming to the outside of the house, and stockings will be hung on Christmas eve. Currently, my biggest concern is keeping the house clean in the midst of baking cookies and pulling out the holiday decorations. I’d love to enjoy more of the simple moments, and spend less time stressing about the cleaning.

Enter to win $100 worth of Bona products or a $150 SpaFinder gift card!

The one thing I never wanted was a house full of hardwood floors. They look fantastic, especially with Christmas decorating them. However, the upkeep of hardwood floors is not something especially easy. So what’s a 27-week pregnant mom of 4 to do? Well, this is how I enjoy the simple moments during the holiday season, while also cleaning the floors in under 15 minutes.

Simple Moments Step 1:

Ask the Husband to help. “Honey, I can’t clean the floors today. There are too many, the kids are too dirty, and baby belly says I’ll never make it back up.”
OK he says…. a week later, you realize just how bad the floors have become. I get it. He has a full time job, and as much as the floors need cleaned, spending time as a family not cleaning is probably more important this season anyways.

Simple Moments Step 2:

Ask the Kids. “Hey kids, I just swept up this mess! Hang up your coats, put your shoes away, do NOT wear them around the house after you ran through the mud/snow. Please oh please will someone clean up this mess?”

You wonder if anyone listened as they ran past, and tried to decide if you should get down on all fours and spot clean the tracks you hope are just mud. Remember that you are quite pregnant, and as the OB has told you twice now “measuring large”, and decide it’s not worth getting stuck on the floor and having a 4 year old attempt to help you up.

Simple Moments Step 3:

Buy Bona Floor Care products, and clean your whole house in 15 minutes. Dust and mop those hardwood floors from a safe standing position!

That’s right, do something right for you this holiday season. I am so incredibly impressed with the Bona wet and dry system. My first step was to take the Dusting Cloths and give a full once over to the whole house – well every room but our 1 carpeted room. So much dirt and dust! After this very simple step, Mark walked through and said “Hey! The floors look shiny.” To which I replied, “Thanks, I’ve only dusted them.”

After the Dusting Mop did it’s job – in less then 5 minutes, might I add – I pulled out the wet cleaning pads. Bona specifically makes pads that are safe to use on hardwood floors, and leave no residue behind. The last thing anyone should worry about during the holidays is whether their cleaning products are doing the right job.

Ta-Da! We now have clean floors, that I did, all me, by myself, throughout the entire house! I may not completely despise living in a home with hardwood flooring now with how quick the cleanup has become. Plus, it’s hard to look past the simple touch a hardwood floor can bring to a home.

Personally, after such ‘grueling’ work I took a moment to put my feet up, grab a mug of hot cocoa, and watch our son enjoying the Christmas tree. He just loves looking at all the ornaments and telling me about his favorites.

If you’d like to enjoy a Bona Simple Moments, head over to their Facebook page and enter to win either $100 worth of Bona products OR a $150 Spa Finder Gift Card. A trip to the spa sans husband and kids sounds like another perfect moment to enjoy after the holidays are over.

December 12, 2016
When Kids Refuse to Clean Their Room Get a Hefty Helper

When the kids refuse to help clean their own rooms, it’s time to grab a helper you can trust. I turned to Hefty for its exceptional performance and strength I knew would be needed!

GRAB A $1 OFF HEFTY COUPON HERE

In this room, 2 of our children share the space. I always thought one was fairly on top of keeping her stuff up and organized and knew that if I asked her to go clean up, she would. The other child would cry, complain, and the proceed to become distracted by all the cool stuff she was hanging on to.

As it turned out, my super awesome helper was just stuffing everything under her bed. Doh! I thought as I attempted to hold her mattress up with one shoulder, and fit my slowly growing pregnant belly between the frame, that I sure could have used the strength of WWE Fighter John Cena. I imagined him coming in and easily holding the mattress aloft while I took my time to get every last toy and piece of garbage out that I could find.

She had at least done a good job of stuffing it all against the back wall so it wasn’t apparent unless anyone actually really looked under there. My so-called messy child turned out to have very little under her bed, other than items I could tell had only accidentally fallen beneath. Give me bad mom of the year for comparing the two, when in fact, they’re pretty equal in their cleanliness. Some just hide it better than others.

So what do you do when the kids really and truly refuse to clean up their mess? Well, this is what I did.

Give them a timeline

I told the girls that they needed to get their room clean, and if they didn’t I would come in and clean for them. Now, I probably should have put a timeline on it, but I figured I’d just take the next day I wasn’t too busy and do it. Turns out that gave them a full month to clean. Throughout this month I would give them friendly reminders.

example: “Mom I’m bored”
“Well, I haven’t cleaned your room yet. Why don’t you do it, before I can?
“Nevermind”

Invite Them to Help

I had finally found the perfect day that I could mentally and physically clean their room. I thought about doing it during school hours but chose to wait until the kids got home. By doing this, they could see exactly how I cleaned up the mess – eliminating the excuse “It’s too hard”. This also offered the opportunity for them to join me in cleaning their mess and absolved me from any tears for what may come up missing later.

At least twice one of them came in to talk to me, and I invited them to help. They wanted to play in their room, but I let them know their option was to help me clean or to find another room to play in. Say this with kindness, and no expectation that they will actually help. Who know, maybe your kids will actually stay to help.

Know What is Important and What is Not

I promised the girls when we moved here that I would no longer get rid of their toys without their permission. With our many moves I had gotten in the habit of picking and choosing what they could keep and not while downsizing our living spaces. So I knew I couldn’t throw out anything important. In fact, the only thing I could throw out was the garbage. Of course, I got to decide what was garbage, but as their mom, I knew what would be too emotional to let go of, and what I could get away with trashing.

Start making piles. One pile of trash. One pile of donations. Everything else should have a place in the room.

Get Hefty

I don’t know about other kids, but I have a very recycling conscious child. She loves creating things out of boxes, and whatever else I toss into the recycling bin. Of course, I am perfectly fine with this, IF she would not then leave her treasures strewn across her room. I knew I’d need something strong to hold all the potential garbage I would be finding, so I picked up some Hefty kitchen trash bags in Clean Burst Scent. After all, if I was going to clean their room for them, I would want it to smell clean too. With Arm & Hammer’s patented odor neutralizer, you’ll want to grab these bags too.

Use the Hefty Ultra Strong bags for gathering your different piles. With the active tear resistant technology and break resistant grip drawstring, you can really fit a lot into these tough bags. I fit at least 3 decent sized cardboard boxes into our designated trash bag, something that I have seen easily rip trash bags in the past.

You all know I love a good deal too! So I was pleasantly surprised when Hefty’s new tougher bags were at a new low price! Add on the downloadable $1 off coupon from iBotta and these bags are practically a steal! Head over to Hefty to get your coupon, and then go do a little bedroom cleaning yourself.

October 7, 2016
Teaching Kids to Clean with a Bathroom Cleaning Station
This Bathroom Cleaning has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone.#ScrubTheMess #CollectiveBias

The last thing any pregnant momma wants to do is scrub the toilets, at least this one. I’ve been teaching my kids how to clean since a young age, and this year has been no different. So today I’m sharing with you my Bathroom Cleaning Station.

It was a jump for joy moment to find that there was a new Scotch-Brite® Disposable Toilet Scrubber on the market! There’s not much about bathrooms that make people shout for joy, but us Mom’s know the real victories in life. A clean bathroom, HELLO! It’s like one the best feelings in the world, am I right? The Disposable Toilet Scrubber means no more wet toilet brushes being left in the bathroom. A simple click of the button and the scrubber is in the trash.

After our rental with the moldy toilets, I get sensitive about having our toilets spic and span. So for the last few year I’ve been specifically focusing on teaching the kids how to clean the bathrooms. My 6-year-old happens to be the most fantastic bathroom cleaner you’ve ever seen, and when given the choice of cleaning her room or the bathroom, she’ll always go for the toilets. With a little supervision, like when we clean the toilet, she’s phenomenal.

Check out these Elegant Bathroom Ideas

So now that the kids know how to clean the bathroom, I decided it was time to make a checklist. With a wipeable checklist, I don’t have to hover when I send them to clean the bathrooms anymore. Instead, I can just hang out – haha – and wait until they finish everything before I head in and make sure it is all done. This awesome checklist allows the kids – and even forgetful grownups – to visually see what needs to be done, and double check that they got it all.

Click Image to Download and Print

I won’t lie, the kids are really good at spiffing up their bathroom. It’s organized and looks from the surface pretty clean. Sometimes, though, I will find rolled balls of wet towels in the corner from their attempt at wiping off the counter, or cleaning around the toilet. So to combat that, I created the Bathroom Cleaning Station. Hand in Hand with the checklist, the kids can now see which cleaning product should be used where, and I can make sure it all got done.

Bathroom Cleaning Station

Supplies
- Small box or Basket – same size as the back of the toilet works perfect
- Scotch-Brite Disposable Toilet Scrubber and Refills
- Wet Wipes
- Glass Cleaner
- Printable Checklist and corresponding Images
- Dry Erase Marker
Alright, so the kids have cleaned the bathroom -minus the toile – and grabbed me for an inspection. Things are looking pretty good, but the one area I let them skip is the toilet. Of course, they think it’s fun to do, but I prefer they get me before finishing it up so we can use the Disposable Toilet Scrubbers properly. The New Scotch-Brite Disposable Toilet Scrubber was designed to reach the messes we’ve been leaving behind – like under the rim – an often attempted spot to clean, but frequently missed.

Now if we ever live in a rental with those nasty moldy toilets again, I know I can trust Scotch-Brite in my bathroom cleaning arsenal. With its built-in bleach alternative cleaner with pumice – rust and hard water have no chance! You can pick up the New Scotch-Brite Disposable Toilet Scrubber and Refills at your local Kroger.

Right now there is an Instant Redeemable Coupon on the Scotch-Brite® Disposable Toilet Scrubber that will Save you $2. This coupon can be redeemed at the register during checkout!

Looking for more Bathroom Cleaning inspiration? Check out these other great ideas!
August 29, 2016