Clean Up Your Room?!?

---

June 2025 - Organization Pending Newsroom - Upper Arlington, Ohio

---

Welcome to Organization Pending's Newsroom, June 2025: Clean Up Your Room?!?

This month, deep dive into some of the common struggles kids have when we want them to declutter, organize, and clean their rooms, with Why Doesn't My Kid Know How to Clean Up Their Room?.

Thank you for reading! Subscribe to receive the Newsroom in your email each month, and follow Organization Pending on Facebook and Instagram for local decluttering opportunities and home organizing tips!

If you have an upcoming event, resource, or professional the community should know about, contact Organization Pending.

---

Why Doesn't My Kid Know How to Clean Up Their Room?

Many parents feel frustrated by the state of the kids' rooms, left wondering why their kids don't know what to do when they're told to clean up their rooms, or why their kids' rooms so quickly look like mini tornados have torn through them.

One major barrier for kids trying to keep their rooms decluttered, organized, and clean, is that often kids have one to three areas in the home that they can claim as theirs. Many times their bedrooms are multi-purpose areas, making zoning, or creating specific areas in the bedroom for specific activities, essential. For some kids, their bedrooms have the normal functions of a bedroom, as well as being a living room, where they hang out with friends or read, and maybe they have a place for homework and/or arts and crafts, possibly many of their get-ready morning supplies are in their bedroom instead of a bathroom. Creating zones for each function of the room helps kids to start establishing where their items belong - maybe they don't always put their pencils back in the holder, but perhaps they at least get on the desk, making a 5-minute daily tidying routine much more productive.

Another major barrier to kids cleaning up their room is the actual communication and words we use to accomplish our goals. Especially if we've never walked through the process with our kids, talking aloud about the steps we're taking to declutter, organize, and clean their bedrooms, the vagueness of "clean up your room" could be confusing. Because when we, as parents, say "clean up your room," we are referring to a multi-step process that could involve decluttering, organizing, and actual cleaning (dusting, vacuuming, etc.). Often kids process our words literally, leading kids to emphasize the final step of the "clean up your room" process, shoving items into bins or under the bed so they can clean as much as possible, while "pick up your room" similarly points kids only to the organizing stage of what we want to happen.

For my family, as we introduce new chores, we look forward to the future, where the kids will be completing these chores themselves, and work through the chores with the kids several times until they don't have further questions, and follow up with retouching of missed details is minimal.

Decluttering:

For the decluttering stage, we remain active participants in the process to help maintain motivation, and to allow me to separate donations as needed. After an initial decluttering of all categories, we maintain seasonal clothing decluttering (and daily decluttering when they realize something doesn't fit anymore), and declutter toys and other categories as they fill up, or as we realize certain categories aren't being used as often.

Organizing:

My number one piece of advice when organizing with or for kids is to ask! Kids know better than us how they use their items, and the first time I organized with our kids, I learned that our way of organizing was actually impeding the kids' ability to replace their items in the existing zones. Many parents emphasize different brands or shows that character toys are from...but I discovered most kids are thinking in a broader category - characters (ultimately making everyone's jobs easier with less categories to worry about!). With one bin of character toys, versus 15 bins of specific character bins, you'll save money on containers, space in your home, and the headaches involved when kids struggle to put their items back in their homes.

Cleaning:

Before introducing our kids to a new chore, I sit down and create a detailed checklist of how to complete it, step-by-step, as if I was writing instructions for a new hire at a job. Our goal is to create a comprehensive guide that will allow our kids to achieve success without us needing to intervene. This means including clear, precise directions - instead of saying, "Sweep and wet mop floor.", try "Move the rug, trash can, laundry basket, and other items before sweeping the floor. Sweep the floor. Wet mop floor. Wait for the floor to dry before replacing items." Each of these individual tasks would be individual action items with check mark boxes, making it easy for kids to follow along. Include helpful and safety information as well, like making sure to keep the cord clear of the vacuum when in use.

Before we tackle new chores for the first time together as a family, we take a look at the checklist together, and reference it while we complete the chore, noting where the kids had questions (or where I forgot a detail), updating the document before the next time. These chore lists can be kept in a reference binder for when the kids are ready to fly solo, and the lists can be laminated or kept in binder sheets for kids who benefit from physically checking off boxes with a dry erase marker.

How early is too early?

Evidence suggests involving kids, in age- and ability-appropriate ways, with household chores as early as possible to gain the long-term benefits associated with gaining and practicing these skills. Participating in their own self-care and hygiene, as well as participating in tasks that support their household, starts forming those early building blocks to independence as an adult.

The Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics' article, Associations Between Household Chores and Childhood Self-Competency, researchers found in a longitudinal study that "the frequency of chores in kindergarten was positively associated with a child's perception of social, academic, and life satisfaction competencies in the third grade [...]. Compared with children who regularly performed chores, children who rarely performed chores had greater odds of scoring in the bottom quintile on self-reported prosocial, academic ability, peer relationship, and life satisfaction scores." In other words, kindergartners who participated in household chores perceived themselves as more competent in life, social, and academic skills - and this study notes that "performing chores with any frequency in kindergarten was associated with improved math scores in the third grade."

In The Australian Occupational Therapy Journal's article, Executive functions and household chores: Does engagement in chores predict children's cognition?, researchers found that "engagement in self-care chores (e.g., making self a meal) and family-care chores (e.g., making someone else a meal) significantly predicted working memory and inhibition. [...] Our findings likely reflect that most chores require individuals to self-regulate, maintain attention, plan, and switch between tasks, thereby supporting the development of executive functioning." An interesting note from this study was that "there was no significant relationship between engagement in pet-care chores and executive function skills," countering a commonly held belief that having a pet is a way to teach responsibility. It's the emphasis on chores that care for the self and the household that is the predictor of long-term benefits.

If you're needing more direction on what could be age-appropriate chores, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry included a short list for ages 2-teen, as well as a few helpful tips to get you started in their Chores and Children article.

Do you and your child need decluttering and organizing support? Organization Pending offers Kid Organization Sessions, working directly with kids 10+, and/or working with you to help accomplish long-term goals in your children's spaces. Schedule your free virtual assessment today.