10 tips for keeping your house tidy with kids
Last Updated on November 9, 2024
Keeping your house tidy when you have kids is hard, it’s like having mini hurricanes in your house, that cause a lot of chaos in a short amount of time.
However, whilst it’s hard to keep your house tidy with kids, it’s not impossible.
Here are some tips for keeping your house tidy when you have kids, which I do as much as I can with a four year old and a 9 month old.
DECLUTTER REGULARLY
Decluttering your home regularly goes a long way to keeping your house tidy, as the less you have, the less you need to constantly tidy up, and the less things your kids can find to make a mess with.
Decluttering doesn’t have to be another thing to add to your to do list, it can be done in as much time as you’d like, and in as big a way as you like.
If you’d like some ideas on how you can declutter in different ways, then please visit any of the below related posts.
PICK THINGS UP EVERY DAY
One of the best ways I keep my home tidy is by tidying up a little bit every day.
I do this by picking up anything that doesn’t belong in a room that I’m about to leave, and putting it in the room that it’s supposed to be in, this can even be done in as little as 10 minutes a day.
This is a great way of keeping your house tidy if you start to feel overwhelmed by all your things, and don’t know where to start.
Simply removing items so you can see your floor, goes a long way to alleviate feelings of overwhelm.
KEEP THINGS OUT OF REACH
Keeping things out of reach becomes a safety necessity when you have toddlers or crawling babies, as they can pull things on themselves.
However, keeping things out of reach also means there’s fewer things for kids to leave all over the floor.
Keeping things out of reach may also mean putting folded laundry on the kitchen table.
Ryan who is four still likes to sit on my folded laundry, so to avoid having to pick it up off the floor, I move it to where he can’t reach it.
LIMIT TOYS IN YOUR MAIN LIVING AREA
This is my favourite tip to do when keeping your house tidy, and something that I’ve recently done and loved.
Limiting the number of toys you have in your main living area is by far the best way to keep your house tidy, and keep your sanity intact.
Our living area is open plan, which means that it opens up into where we eat, where I cook, and where Ryan plays. This means without a doubt that Ryan’s toys end up in every area we live in.
Recently I had some toy storage, Ryan’s kitchen, whiteboard, and round table and chairs in our living area, which meant that no matter how much I decluttered his toys, they were always everywhere, and it was extremely frustrating.
The best thing I did to overcome this was move the storage that had toys in it with multiple parts to them into his room, and now only a couple of larger toys are downstairs, which has improved the tidiness of our living area immensely.
MAKE YOUR KIDS RESPONSIBLE FOR TIDYING THEIR ROOMS
This tip for keeping your house tidy is especially important if you decide to move the majority of your kid’s toys from your main living area to their bedroom.
Making your kids responsible for tidying their rooms means that they’ll quickly learn that the more mess they make, the more they have to tidy up, and we all know how much kids love to tidy.
A great way to help them tidy their rooms on their own is to put systems in place that they understand.
For example, if you have storage areas for their toys like containers, ask them what toys they want to go in each container, as where their toys go needs to make sense to them, even if it means dress ups and cars go together.
This makes no sense to us (just like when they mix Play-Doh colours together!), but makes perfect sense to them, which means they’ll be more likely to tidy up their toys when it’s time to.
GIVE YOUR CHILD INCREASED TIDYING UP RESPONSIBILITIES
A great benefit of your child tidying up their bedroom, is that they can transfer these skills to other areas of the home.
As your child gets older, they can do more to help with keeping your house tidy, such as putting laundry away, emptying the dishwasher, and picking things up from one room and putting them away where they belong.
MAKE SURE EVERYTHING HAS A PLACE
If there’s a place for everything you own, and everyone in the house knows where the place is, then keeping your house tidy will be much easier.
Apart from cupboards, shelves, and other permanent areas of your home, other things you can use to store things include pretty storage baskets, containers, even storage in your kids toys, for example I store all of Ryan’s arts and crafts in his toy kitchen.
Having these types of storage solutions make them look like they are part of your home’s décor, and they also make it quick to clean up toys in bulk as they can hold quite a lot.
KEEP SURFACES CLUTTER FREE
Keeping your house tidy also means keeping surfaces clutter free.
Clutter loves company, if there’s a surface with clutter on it, such as paperwork, keys, groceries, or school bag contents, you’re more likely to add other things to it, as it wasn’t tidy to begin with.
Getting into the habit of putting things away as soon as they enter your house, or clearing cluttered surfaces at the end of each night, is a great way to keep clutter and untidiness at bay.
ESTABLISH ROUTINES
Having routines in place where you tackle certain areas of your home at certain times, such as when the kids are in bed, or first thing in the morning, is another great way of keeping your house tidy.
This means that you are doing something everyday, sometimes without even thinking about it, to keep your home tidy.
It can also mean that you know you’ll get to tidying up at a time that suits you and your kids activity levels, so if your house gets out of control during the day, you have peace of mind knowing that you’ll get on top of things when you’re ready.
LESSEN YOUR EXPECTATIONS
There will be times when you just don’t want to do any of these tips.
It could be because you’re exhausted, you don’t have the time, or you’re in a season of life that puts house related things on the bottom of your priority list, such as having a new baby, or having sick kids.
If this is the case that’s absolutely fine, there’s no law to say your house has to be tidy. Lessen the expectations you have on yourself and remember that realistically our houses can’t be tidy 100% of the time.
It’s okay to have to step over toys just to get into your kitchen, it’s also okay to leave paper clutter until you absolutely have to deal with it, and it’s okay to not deal with untidiness even if you’re the type of person that can’t stand things being untidy.
Just deal with what you need to do whenever you have the energy, or do a quick tidy up before you go to bed.
Is there anything that you do regularly to keep your house tidy?
