Are you a self described “neat freak”? If so, having children may heighten your anxieties because of the inevitable messes they will make. But fear not, because it is totally possible to keep a neat and tidy house while still being a great parent! Here are 3 helpful parenting tips for neat freaks.
Redesign Your Home
Redesigning your home to make it a space more conducive to staying clean, organized, and tidy is a great way to make less housework and less stress for yourself later on. Doing this will not require an entire remodel, but rather a reimagining of the space. For example, design your living room in such a way that everything is easy to reach with a duster. Move furniture around so that things are less likely to get bumped or knocked over. Using your space to its fullest potential will help keep your home nice and neat.
Have House Rules
When your children are babies or toddlers, you may just have to focus on them and put your home on the back burner for a couple of years. But once they get a little older and can walk and talk, you can begin to enforce some house rules.
For example, if you want to keep your floors nice and clean you may choose not to allow anyone to wear shoes indoors, including your kids and any friends they may have over! You’ll still have to sweep and vacuum sometimes, but not nearly as often if they were walking around indoors after a rainy day and tracking mud everywhere.
Make A Chores List
Having a chores list is something many families do to help divide the workload so that the home stays clean. There are a number of ways you can do this. One way is to have different chores for different days of the week, so that each area of the home is cleaned at least once a week but things don’t feel so repetitive. Another option is to have each member of the household (parents and children included) be responsible for certain chores, and to have those chores rotate.
If there is a specific chore that no one in the home enjoys doing and everyone dreads, perhaps you could make that a punishment chore so that whoever is “in the dog house” has to do it. Of course if no one in your family ever gets in trouble, that chore may never get done!
Being a busy parent doesn’t have to mean sacrificing your clean home! There are so many things you can do to make your own life easier – and cleaner. Just use the tips on this list to make sure you get to have the best of both worlds.
