Family and Parenting: Information For Families

It may seem impossible now but teaching your child to enjoy a clean room may not be as hard as it seems. Children truly do enjoy feeling grown up and by utilizing this feeling you can teach them how to keep a ‘grown-up’ room while still having a ton of fun.

Begin by scouting out your child’s room. Look at their closet space and compare that to the amount of space in the open area of the bedroom. If your child has a large sized closet you may be in luck. If not, don’t fret, you can build an inexpensive organizing cubby-wall that will work just as well (you may have to put in the extra effort to make the cubby-wall look decorative to maintain the appearance of the room).

The general idea is simple, and easy to alter according to the taste and individual needs of your child. You want to create a floor plan that will include a closet-size or semi-wall-size cubby area. Remember the cubby-station in kindergarten? Those neatly placed individual cubbies for each child that were incorporated together to make a cubby-wall. This is what you are shooting for. You will need to make the specifications work with your surface area (closet or one wall of the bedroom) so individualizing the project is a must.

Measure the area you have to work with; width, length, and depth. Head to your local department store and seek out plastic cubby grids with optional fabric drawers, which fit your work area. Assemble the cubbies within your available space; place your child’s belongings in the cubbies directly, or in the optional fabric drawers. This is when you will need to instill the grown-up lessons.

Be sure to inform your child that all of this ‘renovating’ was done especially for them. Be sure to tell them that you made this decision because you know that they are grown-up enough to handle this special arrange that you made. The cubby-holes are there as their “special-space”; they have your full permission to organize their belongings however they wish to organize them, within the cubby space. They have full range to organize their important toys, books, and special items according to their own decision as long as they make the grown-up choice of putting their special things back after they use them. Make sure to reinforce your trust in them, and show that you believe they can do this like a true grown-up. This simple freedom can make a big difference and it is inexpensive enough to give it a shot.