Tidying up: How do you get yours to do it?

Tidying up; from this….

I just asked my ten year old what he thought I should write about today and he came up with two ideas and we decided on this one, a battle I face constantly, tidying up and the untidy kids bedroom.

Now I do know I am not the tidiest person in the world, but I do like to be able to find things!

The kids bedrooms are a mass of clothes, books and toys strewn everywhere. It wouldn’t be so bad, but then they come to me when they can’t find something – but to be honest they don’t look very hard – and usually whatever they need they are hunting for 5 minutes before we have to leave for school or football practise.

My son has asthma so needs to take an inhaler with him, but I don’t know what he does with them all. One day I am going to find a stash of them that some fairy-tale creature has collected!

Back to the bedrooms; tidying up is generally a weekend job and the big incentive is pocket money and a tidy room where friends can play when they have play dates.

The pocket money alone is not always a great motivator but when it’s in the context of saving up for something or they can take it when we go out somewhere that helps them put it into context.

We didn’t want them to think they would always get a financial reward for every job, so there are chores such as loading and unloading the dishwasher, putting dirty clothes in the laundry and feeding the dog we expect them to help with.

Tidying up: …..to this, we hope!

Most of the time it works pretty well, but earlier the same son did say:

“I don’t want any pocket money!”

Not quite sure how true that, was I think he was being lazy. I just said OK. Later I said your room still needs tidying up and he said yes. It’s now tidy, not spotless, but you can walk to the wardrobe without stepping on anything!

And now, we are having a bit of our time, watching the last 30 minute of Back to The Future 2 together.

How do you get yours to do the tidying up? Let us know.

This is our regular Tuesday Tips for Parenting guest post by Beckie Whitehouse from Be Confident Coaching.

Photos courtesy of Microsoft Clipart.