What To Do When It Feels Like Your House is Always a Hot Mess

Does it seem like your house is a hot mess ALL THE TIME? Having small kids can really make it hard to keep the order. Here are 2 tips to help your family in the tidying department. 

TRANSCRIPT
We have an art closet. It's in the basement and it is the dedicated space for coloring, gluing and my kids all time favorite activity- painting. They love painting. We do it every day, multiple times and you don’t even want to know how much paint and paper we’ve gone through. 

Anyways, Now that they’re both a bit older and they can play independently for longer I have been letting them hang out in the basement while I get lunch ready or put a load of laundry in. 

One day a few weeks into quarantine, I heard silence. It was particularly quite and you know that means someone is up to trouble. When I got down there and saw the art closet door ajar I knew this wasn’t good. They managed to open the door, climb the table to get to the tall shelf housing the paint, and dumped the neon orange and baby blue paint all over. It was on the furniture, it was on the floor and it was on them. They both just stood there staring at me, waiting for my reaction. 

Honestly, I started laughing. I wasn’t happy, but I must've left the closet unlocked and they just love painting so much and they were really rockin the cute guilty look. This was an extreme example of a mess in my house, but let me tell you, my house gets messy and it took me a long time and I’m still working on accepting it. Toys are everywhere, crumbs are everywhere, dishes are piled high, laundry is all over and my biggest trigger is when I can’t find stuff because it wasn’t put away. It drives me crazy! 

Especially now that we’re all home all day it feels like the messes are unstoppable. I try to implement designated clean up times but young kids are not motivated or interested in keeping a tidy home. 

There are a lot of variables here including your child’s age, the space you have, and your own cleaning style, but I'll give 2 different quick tips of what has worked for us. First assess if you have clutter. Clutter, according to the dictionary, is a collection of things lying about in an untidy mass. You can find so many ideas about decluttering your home but I’ve never been one to get rid of things that could be useful at a later time. The important thing here is that you have storage for your things especially if you have clutter. If you have bins or baskets, use them! If you don’t you can use cardboard boxes or even bags. When everything has a place, it is easier to tidy up and easier to keep it cleaner for longer.

The second tip is to make cleaning a family event in order to get a desired activity. So for example, before my kids can watch TV, we all tidy up the toys in the room for a few minutes. At first they would just watch me but then they realized if they helped they could watch TV quicker. Modeling what you expect is the first step in getting small kids to understand what you want them to do. 

Unfortunately a messy house is part of life with small kids and as overwhelming as it gets, its ok. They will grow up and understand that putting their toys away is an expectation if you model it. Until then, keep your paint locked up and have realistic expectations of what your family can do right now.

This new reality is just that, something new we need to deal with, but you don't need to deal with it alone. Check in every week day for another quick tip on how to maintain your family sanity. I'm your host Naomi Bocaniciu you can learn more about me and this podcast on instagram @familysanitypodcast. I’m so grateful you are here and if you’re enjoying these tips please rate the podcast and share with your friends. Until next time, whether your family is going insane or you've got it all together, these are definitely times you will always remember.