Wouldn’t it be great if our homes cleaned themselves?
No more dishes. No more laundry. No more sweeping or mopping.
A girl can dream, right?
Unfortunately, having a clean home does not happen automatically. It happens through consistent effort.
Now, make no mistake: I am not implying you should have a spotless, perfectly clean home. Nope. Not at all. If you doubt me, you should look at my laundry room right now.
What I am saying is if you would like to have a cleaner home, and your children are a major obstacle to that, then I have a strategy for you to try.
And trust me, my children are no exception.
Last night, my daughter dropped bandaid trash on the floor. On purpose.
Why?
Just because she didn’t feel like walking five steps to put it in a trash can.
No kidding.
Obviously, Mr. and I made her pick it up and throw it away, with an expression on our faces that said, “What is wrong with you, child?!”
Or, for my fellow Southerners, “Were you born in a barn?”
But there is one thing that has helped us with our mini humans and their predilection for messiness.
It’s simple. It’s no-prep. It’s not fancy or flashy. It’s not a trend.
Ready? Here it is:
Put everything in its home at night.
The concept makes sense, right? Since Mr. is a coach, our family spends a lot of evenings at the gym. Sometimes, those evenings can run late. Since I’m getting old, I like to go to bed early. When I’m tired, I don’t just sleep on the bleachers. I don’t make a pallet in the gym floor.
Why not?
That would be weird.
I go home, and then I go to bed. If I’m not at home, I don’t go to sleep yet.
Our children understand this. So it’s easy for them to understand that their toys have to go home for the night. Their toys cannot “sleep” out in the cold, on the floor. They have to go back to their dwelling place.
Now, this phrase is not a magical wand. It’s just a framework to help them understand why they should put away their belongings.
But what if not all their belongings have a home?
And that’s where the work begins. We have a finite amount of space in our home, and while I know there are lots of clever space-saving devices and cabinets and thingamajigs, I am not personally interested in purchasing all of those.
I want easy access to my things. If we don’t have a home for a toy, they have to “evict” something to make room for it. This process is extremely easy for them.
Honestly? It usually means they’re swapping out one piece of junk toy for another piece of junk toy. But hey, that’s okay, because I never actually increase the number of piece of junk toys present in my home.
It stays relatively constant.
And when I say, “Put your toy home for the night,” they know where it goes. Perfecto!
So there you have it. If your children have too many toys as of now, you could have a “find a home” party, where they get to choose a new place for their toys.
It’s like House Hunters, except no one around here has a budget of $800,000.
Hopefully you can use this analogy to make cleaning your home a slightly smoother process.
And if all else fails, just sit in your messy living room and watch another episode of House Hunters.