7 Tips to Get Kids to Clean Their Rooms and Keep Them Clean

Do your children refuse to clean their rooms? Has room cleaning time become a battle? Wondering where you begin when teaching kids to clean their own rooms? Use these seven tips to teach kids to keep their rooms clean. Below we present a step-by-step guide for making the room cleaning process easier and quicker for your kids.

How to Declutter your Kids’ Rooms?

The first step you will want to take to help your kids have a cleaner room is to declutter. This is an especially important first step when cleaning a messy kids room. Kids keep so much in their rooms and they really don’t have enough space for everything in there. Decluttering not only gives your kids a little less to keep clean, but also makes the process easier. So how do you get your kids to actually declutter their rooms?

Remove Items No Longer Wanted when you Clean their Rooms

Your will want to lead your children through decluttering each area of their room and determining the things they love and need from those that are no longer wanted. Right now we are quickly going through items, so don’t worry if your child is keeping way too much as this point. We will get to that soon.

Keep, Donate, Pack for later, or Garbage

Set up four piles in your child’s room. You can use bins if you have ones big enough for the job. Have a keep bin for items your child loves and wants to keep. Next you will want a donate bin for items you no longer need. You will also need a pack for later for anything that you would like to save. This can include clothes or toys that you will hand down to a your sibling, use to make a baby book, or keep to pass onto your child when they become a parent. Finally, you will want a garbage area.

Tackle Each Area One at a Time

We begin with the clothes. These are the easiest items to determine what stays and what goes. Simply go through their dresser and closet. Help them to pull out any clothes that no longer fit. Put these off to the side to donate or pack away. Just getting out clothes that no longer fit can make a big difference in keeping your child’s room clean.

After all the clothes have been sorted, your child will have more room in their dresser and closet. This will make it easier to put their clothes away each time you do laundry and hopefully keep clothes from being thrown on top of dressers or on the floor. We find that clothes are a big factor in keep our kids rooms clean.

Now it’s time to tackle the toys, books, and other items that pile up in bedrooms. Quickly go through each toy and book. Place each in one of the four piles. Don’t fret if your child puts almost everything in the keep pile. This is just a quick opportunity to remove items from your child’s room. Also, if you know a younger sibling will love something, simply move an item from the donate pile to the pack for later.

Get Rid of Everything Your Child No Longer Wants

Everything that your child has added to the garbage, pack for later, or donate pile, remove from their room. The last thing you want is your child to pull items from these piles to add to their keep pile. We are trying to pair down what they have in their room.

The quicker you get these out of your child’s room, the better. Try to move these to places your child doesn’t go often. We use our basement for things to pack for later and our garage for donations. Anything in the garbage pile, please dispose of right away. Once they are out of sight, they will be out of mind. Your child has done an incredible job of lessening the items in their room already.

How do we declutter the surfaces?

The exact same way as above. Take each item on your child’s dresser, desk, bed, or table. Let your child decide which pile to add the item. This can go pretty fast and will help get some items out of their rooms quickly.

Create a System for Swapping Items

You will want an easy to use, kid-friendly system for swapping items out of your children’s rooms. This system is two part: one for items your child out grows and one for items we trade from time to time.

Hand-me Down System

Create an area for your child to put anything that they out grow. This can be clothes that no longer fit, toys they no longer want, or even decorations or bedding that no longer fit their tastes. We keep boxes for clothes, organized by size, in our basement. When our children out grow a size of clothing, they can quickly add their old clothes to these boxes. This makes it easy to pull out clothes for younger siblings or donate the entire box to a family in need.

Trading System

You will also need bins for storing items that you change on a regular basis. This is usually for toys and books that you child plays with on occasion. Depending on the number of toys and books your child has determines how many bins you will need. We suggest trying to make 1 – 3 bins so it’s easy to swap out items. How often you swap will depend on your child as well. Some parents love to swap once a month, others swap each new season. To swap, simply take one bin from your child’s room and switch with a bin in storage.

This method keeps things simple because you don’t need extra storage space. Instead, you just switch bin for bin. The easier you can keep this process, the more likely you are to use it. Just be sure you have an easily accessible space to store the bins. We will discuss how to determine what goes in each bin in further detail a bit later.

Assign a Place for Everything to Get Your Kids to Clean Their Rooms

We’ve begun the decluttering process, but if your children are anything like mine, I bet they have much more to declutter. This is the time to push for even more. Ask yourself, where to put things away? Work with your child to determine a place for every item they want to keep in their room.

Label all the places

Wondering how to clean your room fast? Labels are the best trick for cleaning your room faster. Go through your child’s room and label all the places where things can be put away. They will most likely have a dresser and closet for their clothes. Label the drawers with the type of clothes that goes in each. If they have a special uniform, label the hanger or shelf for their uniform. These help to make sure your child can put everything away.

Label places to store everything in their room. You will need a place to store their extra towels, bedding, toys, books, trophies and medals, coloring and school supplies, and accessories like hair bows or belts. Work with your child to label each of these places so that they know exactly where everything goes. Now your child knows exactly where to put everything in their room quickly.

We have a wonderful label maker that simplifies this process. We can quickly type out a label for any bin or shelf in our child’s room.

Why Use Bins When Kids Clean Their Rooms?

This is where bins come in super handy. Some bedrooms have good storage for items. You may have a built in bookshelf or closet organizer. These are great for setting up a specific place to put things. However, you will find that you won’t have a place for all the small items. This is why we always keep bins on hand.

Purchase or repurpose some bins for your children’s rooms. Be sure that these bins fit onto the shelves or inside of their closet for ease of keeping the floor clean. Decide if the bin needs a lid or is easier to use without one. Now label each of the bins with what your child should put into each bin. We love to add a picture to the bin for quick and easy reference.

Make it Easy to Put Everything Away

Set all the bins on the floor for a few moments. Your children should go through their keep pile and place everything into the correct bins. This will take some time this first time, but will go much faster each day after. Eventually this will take only a few minutes every day.

Now here’s the secret, if an item doesn’t have a special place, it’s time to consider if we really need this item anymore. If a bin becomes full, but your child still has more items to go inside, they will need pick some they no longer need. Your child will need to make some tough decisions. For this, you will want to have a pack for later bin and a donate bin. For any items that won’t fit into the assigned places, your child should decide if the item can be donated or should be packed for later.

The number of boxes you have for packing for later depends on your storage space outside of your child’s room. We suggest limiting this to 1 – 3 bins of each type of item. So you may have 2 bins of books, another 3 bins of toys, and possibly a bin of hair bows. This will vary for each child.

Once your child has successfully found a place for everything, place the bins on the shelves or inside the closet. Now your child’s room is clean and should only need maintenance to keep it clean. Keep reading for our secrets to maintaining a clean room.

Make a Kid-Friendly Visual Checklist to Teach Kids to Clean their Rooms

Now that you’ve begun decluttering and everything has it’s place, it’s time to teach your children how to clean their rooms. We find that using a checklist makes cleaning much more likely to happen. It is the best way to clean your room for our family. This checklist should be easy for your child to follow and complete quickly. This is basically a how to clean your room list for your child. It will tell your kid exactly which things to clean in your room. What if we told you your child could achieve a clean room in less than fifteen minutes? Well, it’s completely possible and a chore checklist is just the trick.

Make a Chore Checklist

What are your child’s responsibilities? Start by brainstorming the chores that your children need to complete each day to keep their rooms clean. We split this into six different parts that take only a minute or two to do each day. This means that your child can clean their room in under 15 minutes a day. That’s definitely not too much to ask. So what are the steps to clean your room?

Our first step is to make their bed. This simple act goes a long way to starting your day off right. Just making your bed each morning has you accomplishing a simple task every day.

Next is to place all your dirty clothes in your hamper. For most children, this will be the pajamas they are changing out of in the morning. But it might also be the clothes that you child wore the day before that hasn’t made it isn’t the hamper yet. If socks are causing you a headache, be sure to click over to our post on Matching Socks Tips to make laundry a little easier.

Then focus on any toys, books, or coloring and school supplies that you child has left out during the day. We actually split these into 3 different tasks so that it is quick and easy for your child to do each one.

Finally, clean up any garbage that has accumulated in your child’s room. We keep a garbage can in each bathroom, so it is fairly easy for our children to throw away garbage without it being in their room. We tend to find that a garbage can in your child’s room may get spilled or not emptied enough.

Create a Visual Checklist to Clean Their Rooms

Now comes the secret to making this checklist work for even your younger children. Simply include a picture with each chore on the list. This helps your non-reader access the information, while making the checklist quick and easy for your older kids. At a quick glance, your child can be reminded of each chore that they need to do before leaving their room for breakfast in the morning.

We suggest either laminating or placing your visual chore checklist in a page protector. Then hang this up in your child’s room. A few amazing places to keep this is on the back of your child’s bedroom door, on their closet door, or above their dresser. These are places your child needs to go every day so the visual chore checklist is more likely to be seen.

Be sure to grab our Is Your Room Clean printable below. It’s a great clean your room chart for children just learning to keep their room clean. This visual checklist makes a world of difference with keeping your child’s room clean.

How to Make Cleaning Up Fun?

We all have times when cleaning really is a chore and not something we want to do. Getting kids to clean rooms can be especially troublesome. This is where you need to add a little fun to the cleaning. So how do you make cleaning a bedroom fun?

Start by setting a goal. This is a great way for getting kids to work on their rooms. Having a simple goal such as clean for 20 minutes or put away all the toys on the floor, really limits the scope of the cleaning for your child. This simple action can set everything in motion and often times we are able to do more than what we set out to accomplish. It’s much easier getting motivated to clean when you have a goal in mind.

Add a little music to your routine. We love to play music while we clean since it adds to the atmosphere and tends to make everyone feel a little happier. Try out a little relaxing music to clean your room this week and see if it helps you. Plus you can dance and even enjoy a song together.

Try Our Clean Up Math Game to Get Kids to Clean Their Rooms

Turn cleaning into a game. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, but is a strategy every parent needs in their back pocket. We love to clean up in sets with our clean your room game. We find this to be the easy way to clean your room for our children. For example, we ask our children to clean up 5 sets of 6 toys. This gets them to quickly put away 30 toys without the overwhelm of asking them to clean up 30. By giving sets of toys, your child can accomplish one set pretty quickly and show some pride. Plus you can congratulate them on a job well done.

This is a great way to break up larger cleaning projects into smaller more meaningful chunks for your child. It also reminds you to praise your child more often and keep the cleaning positive. Plus it builds the right mindset to get it done. Only cleaning up a few items seems completely manageable instead of shutting down immediately with the larger number. Plus you are working on some great math building skills too.

To read more, check out our post on The Clean Up Math Game. We offer suggestions to vary the game for younger and older children as well as ways to keep the game new and interesting. This clean your room game for kids changed the entire cleaning process in our house.

Schedule a Time to Clean Kid’s Rooms Every Day

We find that building this time into your child’s daily schedule helps so much. When it only takes 10 – 15 minutes a day to keep your room clean, it isn’t even hard to add to the schedule. For us it works best as part of their morning routine, but we know that some families are super busy in the morning. So instead, you could try working this into their bedtime routine or even snack routine right after school. Doing a little every day is the best way to clean your room without getting overwhelmed.

The timing isn’t so important as having a set time to clean your room. Taking just a few minutes every day keeps children’s rooms from becoming overwhelming and so messy that they fight you on the cleaning. Yes, it might take a few weeks to get their room to this point. Yes, they may fight you in the beginning. But with time, cleaning their room will become habit, just like taking a shower and brushing their teeth.

Be Consistent

Now is the time to really drive home keeping to the schedule. Families need to be consistent and do a quick clean up every day. Not only will this build a habit quicker, but it will show your children how much they can do in just a few minutes every day.

In the beginning you will need to check up on your child daily to help build the new habit. Once the habit is begun, you can skip a few days of checking, but you will still need to peek in from time to time. I like to make it a habit of mine to peek in my children’s rooms twice a day at a minimum. This is pretty easy when you have kids.

Stop in their room at least once each morning. This might be when you wake them up for the day, walk past their room on your way downstairs, or even a special snuggle in their bed. Take a peek around their room and discuss any problem areas that need to be focused on.

Then each night around bedtime, make another trip to your child’s room. You are probably already there to read them a story, tuck them in, or even just to say good night. This is a great time to check out their clean room and again, let your child know how well they are doing! You can also let them know of any areas that need a little extra focus.

Offer Instruction – How to Help Your Child Clean Their Room?

As your child works on keeping their room clean, offer instruction. You will need to teach your child exactly where to put everything in their room. They may also need to learn exactly how to clean each area so that it meets your standards.

Take a moment and teach your child how to make their bed. You may need to show them for a few days, then assist them with making their own bed for a few more days before your child becomes independent. Teach your kid how to hang up their clothes. This might take a bit too, but once they learn, it’s so worth it.

If you notice an area in your child’s room that needs some extra love. Spend a few days instructing your child in how to clean up that area. Don’t assume they know, instead teach. This will ensure they know just what to do and can keep the area more clean. Spend a few days cleaning the room together, then turn over the job to your child. Hang out and watch as your child cleans the area for a few days. Then check in every day for a couple more days. Finally, your child will be ready to keep this area of their room clean too!

Document What a Clean Room Looks Like

We love to take pictures of a truly clean room. You child will need reminders of how everything should look and what is better than an actual picture of their room. Attach the clean room picture to your child’s visual chore checklist. Before your child finishes cleaning, they can take a peek at the picture and determine if their room is clean.

These pictures show your child just how nice their room can look when clean too. We have found that pictures provide children inspiration to clean your room. Why? Because they have a clear visual of just how nice it can be when clean. And we all know vision boards help us to reach our goals.

Clean? What Do You Mean? Define Your Expectations Clearly

We find that one picture isn’t enough. Take a picture of each area of your child’s room and post the picture in that area. We find it best to either laminate the picture or place it in a Ziploc bag to keep the picture safe. Then affix the picture to your child’s bedroom. So easy and such a great check.

We take multiple pictures of our child’s clean room. Grab a picture of their bed nicely made, even if you help them. Take a picture of their dresser, desk, bookshelf, and tables all clear of clutter with only what you expect on them. Snap a picture of your child’s closet. Another great picture to get are any hiding areas in your child’s room: under bed or desks, in corners of rooms or behind doors. So them what these spaces look like so they don’t add lots of items here.

Clarify How Much Mess is Acceptable

We all have those areas in our home that are just a little messy. That’s okay and even expected. Just be sure to clarify exactly how much mess is okay with your child. We find that the pictures really do this well. Your child can see exactly what the area should look like, but sometimes our kids need a little more guidance.

They may have items that they use often or are too difficult to access when inside bins with lids. Talk with your child about these items. Is it okay to leave out their school textbooks they need every day? Can they have an open bin with hair bows and hair ties? Decide what is okay and what isn’t together. Then take the time to problem solve.

Maybe hair bows and hair ties need a special drawer so they are easy to access but away. Maybe one draw in the desk is designated to current projects. This way your child can just slip the project into their desk drawer but it’s easy enough to get it out again the next day.

Schedule Different Weeks to Focus on a Specific Part of Your Kid’s Room

There are definitely going to be areas in your bedroom that will need a touch throughout the month. We like to focus on one of these areas each week, so that our bedrooms stay nice and clean. Keep reading for our tips on how to deep clean your room.

Since most months have 4 weeks, we plan 4 different area cleanups each month. For us, it makes the most sense to keep these the same each month with a floating area for when we get that extra week. This happens about 4 times a year, but do consider that you may go on vacation or just want a break from time to time too!

Kid’s Bedroom Deep Cleaning Schedule

Plan a week for your closet revamp. You will want to take a few moments at least once a month to check in on the closet. Ensure that clothes are getting hung up, toys are put away in the correct bins, and everything looks neat and in place.

We also need a little extra for dressers and desks. Sometimes their tops need a little extra attention. Other times we want to focus on the drawers since they start to get a little full. By taking a little time each month, we keep these areas from becoming too big to tackle without headache. This also ensures that dressers, desks, and table tops get washed each month at a minimum.

You will want a day dedicated to changing the sheets for washing. Making a bed is quick and easy, but actually changing the sheets takes time. If your child has two sets of sheets, it’s much easier to change them out. Your child can take off the old sheets and add them to the laundry. Then they can grab their new sheets and make up their bed.

Finally, you may want a week to dust and sort through trophies, medals or other collections. Take a moment to decide which ones to keep and which to pack up or donate. Give each a good dusting and place back on the dresser or shelf.

So, When Can My Kids Clean Their Rooms?

The answer to this question will vary for every child and each family. However, there are a few key guidelines that you can use to support your decision making with when your child can clean their room.

Preschool and Toddlers

As soon as your child is able to take out toys and books on their own, get dressed and undressed, and feed themselves, they have the ability to help keep their room clean. Toddlers and preschool-age children can put away their toys, put dirty laundry into the hamper, and even help put clean laundry in their dresser. While they might not be ready to declutter their room, they definitely can help with keeping their room clean.

School-age Children can Clean their Rooms

When your child reaches kindergarten age, they usually are able to determine things they love and things they don’t need any more. This is a great time to start involving your child with decluttering and making those decisions. Kindergarten is also a big year where children develop their sorting skills. This should translate into putting toys in the correct bins, as long as they are well labeled. They should also be able to put things away correctly if areas are labeled with easy to understand pictures. Using pictures of your child’s actual items can be extremely helpful here.

Depending on the cleaners that you use, your children can also help with wiping down surfaces. We have switched to all green cleaners that are safe for children to use even at a young age. The Shaklee products let our children help with cleaning and we don’t worry about them getting some on their skin. Most children can learn how to use these cleaners safely around age 5 or 6 as well. We suggest double checking cleaners for dangerous chemicals for children before handing them over.

Enjoying these tips for getting kids to clean their rooms, leave us a comment below and let us know your best kid cleaning tips. Need a sample chore list for around the house? Check out our post on How Much to Pay Your Child for Chores? You might be surprised by what we suggest. Looking for more parenting tips, subscribe to our newsletter for freebies each month.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.