As professional house cleaners we see a lot of opportunities in the families we serve. One of the most important of these is encouraging children to get involved in the house cleaning process between visits by your maid service. Here are some of my favorite maid service tips on getting the younger people in the house in on the act of cleaning.
1 – Recognize Different Ages Can Handle Different Chores
Not every child in your home can cart around a full laundry basket but you can get everyone involved in one way or other. For the younger children, give them a simple task that they can handle with ease and put the heavier chores on the teens. Don’t expect perfection from any of them and don’t be skimpy on the praise if you plan to involve your children with house cleaning chores on a regular basis. You can’t expect children to clean as good as professional house cleaners. But, teaching them while young to take care of their environment is so valuable and important.
2 – Make Some Of The Work Into Games
There are so many ways you can convert house cleaning with your children into games. You can create a sorting game where a pair of siblings goes around the house looking for socks, as an example and then something else but they have to keep all items sorted. Or make it a color game picking up everything that is blue or whatever.
3 – Use Chore Charts With Rewards
In a common area post a chore chart that lists the specific chores that each child must complete on a weekly basis . Each child who gets to the end of the week with all their chores checked off receives a small reward of some kind. Executive Maids rewards our house cleaners with Gift Cards to Walmart and Wawa for all of the great reviews that their customers post on Google or Facebook. Rewards are very much appreciated by children and our house cleaners.
4 – Pair Younger Kids With Older Ones
Make a team game where the children are paired up with one younger and one older sibling. Choose a chore that they can work on together to complete for a reward. It can be raking and bagging leaves in the yard or picking up and putting away toys. Whatever the challenge, putting teams together teaches working in a team dynamic to achieve a desired result. Executive Maids cleans in teams of 3 maids per team. Team work is key to getting the job done without overwhelming anyone.
5 – Be Prepared To Switch It Up Every So Often
Don’t be too surprised if the odd time one or more of your children lack the motivation to pitch in and help with the household chores. It happens. Maybe a big test is on the horizon and that it taking away their focus. It’s okay to grant a ‘day off’ every now and again or to reassign chores to different members of the family to keep the activity of house cleaning fun and interesting.
How Do I Know These Things?
“Before I launched my house cleaning company, Executive Maids, I raised three children and operated a state-registered family daycare. I didn’t want ‘strangers’ raising my children and took care of them along with six others for six years at my daycare service, Kids R Us. One of the important lessons I taught all of them was the importance of picking up their toys and games before moving on to another activity. Oh, and I made it fun. You can do the same in your home with your crew of little house cleaners.” – Dawn Zapf
