Tips for keeping home clean - Parenting Video Transcripts
Video 1 Transcript
Oh, one of my favorite topics is how to keep a home clean with a big family and lots of people, and it's been awesome. One of my greatest tips is you just start your day after a morning devotional with your children or however you start your morning is everyone does a little bit for like five or ten minutes. Beds are made, the counters in the bathroom are polished, a quick polish on the mirror, we throw a load of laundry in. I have never done chore charts, I don't like them, they just are a burden to me, keeping track of who's doing what and making sure the stickers are on the chart if they've done it. We work together and you know when you're on the other side of a bed helping your child make their bed and it's a game and it's fun and it's positive and we're getting our home set for the day, there's a wonderful feeling in your home and it's not that hard to keep up a home if you do it together with love and respect.
Video 2 Transcript
When you have older kids who keep leaving their stuff in the main areas, give each person their own like basket or bin, something that fits in the room and you can put their things in that basket or bin and then they take it and put it away when they're done.
Video 3 Transcript
It feels like the only way to keep a house clean when you have lots of children is to set a regular daily goal of how much you want to clean. So, you know, whether that's 30 minutes or 60 minutes or maybe even longer, you know, just setting a timer, listening to some music, and cleaning.
Video 4 Transcript
So every Saturday morning, you can make a list of items that need cleaning, equivalent to two people or two things per person in the house. So you make this list, one person gets to choose first, and the next Saturday, that person changes to a new person. So they can only pick one thing at a time. And then after you go through all the members of the family, then that first person gets to choose the second item, and then through the rest of the family. It helps incorporate choice rather than feeling commanded to go clean. And when people know they have a choice, and when there's incentive to choose first, sort of the resistance can melt away.
Video 5 Transcript
You can't do it all at once, so just start with the biggest surfaces and work your way from there.
Video 6 Transcript
The best way to find something is to clean up. And if you still don't find it, at least you have a clean house. When you're looking for something, you, like, pick up a towel. It's not there, so you put it underneath there. Pick up some books, look underneath. Like, there's a towel. Did I pick that up? Do it again. You see the books. Did I check that already? But if you just put away the thing, then you don't have to look underneath it again, and you don't feel like you wasted an hour looking for the other shoe.
Video 7 Transcript
I'm somewhat of a neat freak. So at first having children with my first, I was like, Oh my gosh, how am I going to keep this living room clean? How am I going to keep this house clean? My problem is that I want my home to look like nobody lives there basically because I want it to be clean all the time. But I've learned that you just have to set realistic goals for yourself. And on Mondays for me in my house, um, I just kind of have to like, that's my deep clean day where I just listen to a podcast and I clean. And you know, throughout the day I'm a stay at home mom. So like throughout the day, washing dishes, vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, whatever it is that needs to be done. But set realistic goals for yourself at keeping a clean home. At night when my children go to sleep, that's when I have, I feel like the most free time to be able to do that.
Video 8 Transcript
I think one of the things that motivates me to want to clean our house is to think of all the many benefits that come by having a clean house. So it helps there to be less contention and fighting in the house if you're in a clean environment. It makes it feel more peaceful, more of like a happy place to be. It just feels better psychologically. Also, if you have small children, toddlers or babies, it makes your house safer if you can keep your house clean. I have cleaned our floors so many times and vacuumed up and picked up so many chocobles and sharp pointy objects that I did not think were there until I started cleaning. I've heard stories of other parents who have lost children to choking accidents of chocobles that were left on the floor. So a big motivation to help me clean is I want my children to be safe, especially our young children. So I like to get rid of any chocobles I find around the floor.
Video 9 Transcript
One of the best ways I know to get kids motivated to clean is to get a cardboard box and write with the marker on it, daddy's box or mommy's box, and then when there's things laying around the floor you throw things in the box. The box is out, maybe out of sight, but the kids know where it's at and they are incentivized to to put things in there. Occasionally you may even put the box in a closet. Maybe things aren't allowed to come out of the box for a certain period of time, but kids often feel motivated to put things in there. It may not be something that needs to last very long, but can be really helpful in at least getting things going, getting things started with keeping the house clean.
