The holidays are over and since the in-laws are coming over, YOU need to clean the house. The only problem is that (surprise, surprise!) teens hate cleaning. You’re tired of cleaning up after your messy teen but what are you to do? How can you get your child to clean? And I don’t mean the “I’ll-hide-it-in-the-closet-because-no-one-would-see-it” kind of clean; no, how can you get your teen to neatly put away their things with minimal screaming contests?
Here are some quick, simple ways to get your teen to clean:
1. Closets – Let’s just face it; teens hate….no, LOATHE folding clothes. Whatever we wear to school normally ends up in a not-so-discreet pile on the floor or stuffed in the drawers. Hangers in closets get rid of the problem of the mess and works WITH your teen’s laziness.
2. Memo or cork boards – These are really useful if you are trying to get your teen to clear his desk. “I can’t put these notes away; I need to see them everyday!” “Why should I put my friends’ pictures away?” Memo boards come in all colors and designs; they can be mounted on the wall and be easily used. Just insert the said pictures and “important” papers between the ribbons; it would be organized and your teen can see it whenever he looks up at his desk, which means LESS time rustling through notes. Same goes for cork boards.
Don’t worry, it may be early to some of you but if you’re like me and everyday is filled to the gills, planning for Christmas couldn’t be early enough. This year I decided to get ready a little earlier. We have made the ‘what I call’ mistake in the past few years to put up the Christmas lights in minus temperatures. We pull out the ladders and I send my ‘always looking for an adventure’ husband on up in the hypothermic inducing temp to unfold the magical Christmas scene I have created in my mind. Yes, Christmas is one of my favourite times of the year. It isn’t just Christmas day, it’s the whole season. It’s the feeling I wholeheartedly embrace.
My husband and I have been renovating our house for 4 and a half years and our most recent project is the main bathroom. We have gutted the room and borrowed space so now we have a large main bathroom, but in the process we lost our laundry chute. It was a great old laundry chute that went right from the bathroom to a holding area in the laundry room. It was the catchall for everyone’s laundry, clothes they didn’t want to put away, toys and lost neighborhood children. Every week (almost) we would do heaps of laundry and get the kids involved in separating, folding and putting away laundry. We carefully reviewed the separation of whites and colours, hot and cold, empty pockets etc. It was a great and often painstaking group effort.