CEOMOM TIP!

If you find this tip helpful, don’t forget to “APPROVE” it by clicking the diamond and feel free to add a comment or two.

3approve

Training Kids to Cut Clutter

Divisions: Cleaning, Grades 4-6, Organization, Teaching Children

Submitted by ceoMom #304, Carrie, 3 months ago

I have a pack rat too, so I can't wait to read answers to your question. Here are a couple of ideas that might help:

1. Tell her that her room might be fine for her, but would she really like it if the whole house looked like her room? Part of your job description as a mom is to train her to be able to keep order in bigger spaces--like a home and an office.

2. Instead of throwing away "treasures" completely, take pictures of them and let her keep them in a flipbook or scrapbook. This helped my 11-year old finally get rid of projects she had been hanging on to since first grade.

3. Buy some new room accessories together--like pillows, a rug, or a bulletin board. Use them as incentives for your organization day.

Good luck! I really need ideas for this one too.

1 comment

ceoMom #442, Melissa — 3 months ago

Thank you for the suggestions. Those are great and will help me with the organizing side of the cleaning.

What I ended up doing is just giving her a choice to help me clean her room, OR clean the living room and bathroom so I could clean her room. She was unhappy about the choices, but she did decide to clean her room, "her way". I'm still not sure what that meant, but I had already started by pulling everything out of her closet floor and starting to separate it into boxes to go through later. Then I explained to her that if everything is piled up like that then she can't find it anyway, AND if she doesn't see something for a year, it may not fit her any more, or she may not like it anymore. She seemed to understand that and she stopped complaining about having to do it. I was actually surprised at how much she was willing to get rid of. We still are not done, but it is getting closer. I told her we needed to do a major clean out about every 6 months. She voted for 2-5 years! LOL!

I also told her that once it was clean, she would have the option of doing a little every day to keep it clean, OR having to spend a whole day doing it every month.

Oh, the other thing I am going to do is to clean out one of my file cabinet drawers and let her use it for school work and projects she still wants to hang on to...that will help me get rid of some stuff I have been "Packratting"!

To leave a comment please login or register.