The Lazy Genius Podcast - #379 - How to Help Kids Clean Their Room

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Today, I’m sharing a loose five-step framework for cleaning a room. If you do not have kids, this episode is not geared as much toward you. However, everyone has the capacity to want a clean room, so if you wish your room was cleaner and you struggle to keep it that way, this episode might actually help. Helpful Companion Links Pre-order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy once it releases in October. Sam Kelly’s Little Cycle Breakers course (affiliate link) Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at autotrater.ca, Canada's Car Marketplace. Ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road?

That's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUVW, German engineered for all. Hey there, you are listening to the Lazy Genius podcast.

I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 379. How to Help Kids Clean Their Room. An important disclaimer to start. If you do not have kids, obviously this episode is not geared in your direction as much. However, everyone has the capacity to want a clean room. So if you wish your room was cleaner and you struggle to keep it that way, you might actually get some help from this episode. In fact, I would not be surprised if this approach gets some love from everyone, not just from parents.

Like, we might all just be like, it's not how to help kids clean your rooms, how to help me clean my room. Okay, in a minute, I'm going to share a loose five-step framework as it relates to cleaning a room. But before I get into that, I want to say at the top that my perspective towards kids and how housework has been getting the best makeover recently. I told you in a previous episode about an audio course that I've been taking from Sam Kelly. The course is called Little Cycle Breakers, and it is so incredibly excellent. The biggest takeaway for me from that course shows up in big ways in this particular episode. I now realize that teaching my kids to clean their room has much larger implications than I always thought. It's not just about them learning personal responsibility and

basic skills, even though both of those things are great. It's about showing how housework and homekeeping does not and should not fall to one person, particularly the mother in a house that has more than one person. More specifically, the act of noticing what needs to be done should not fall to only the mother in a home where there is one. And that learning to notice is way more important than learning the actual cleaning skill. It's kind of like the parenting version of learning to pivot is more important than learning the plan. We've been taught that planning your life is so important and that you're just one planner away from getting your life together. But really the skill that's more important to nurture and develop is learning to pivot. Life is going to change a lot.

Plans will fall apart and you can pivot around them. That skill is way more vital. The same is true of our kids and housework. Yes, the skill itself is super important to learn. But learning, to notice what needs to be done in a kind way is way more important than the specificity of how the actual task gets done. So my goal, I'm learning that my goal is not to teach my kids to clean their rooms. It's to help them see all the things that clean could mean and how to notice it on their own, which is a lifelong skill. So big shout out to Sam Kelly for helping me see this perspective. That thinking plus lazy genius principles is like quite a dynamic. combo. If you want to check out little cycle breakers, we'll put a link in the show notes.

Okay. Let's jump into this framework. Step one, name what matters, of course. But I want you to do that in three specific areas. Okay. First, I want you to name what matters about you and your attitude toward your kid in their room. Okay. Second, what matters as it relates to your kid? And then third, what matters about the cleanliness of the room itself. So what matters most to you about you, about your kid, and about the clean room itself? Let's break those down. First, what matters about you and your own attitude toward your kid in their room? I think it's really important to start here because I know for me, I can get riled up and picky super fast. And even if I don't think I am, my kids still do. Last night, y'all, we were watching a Dude Perfect video about, um,

Christmas stereotypes. My kids love dude perfect. And one of the stereotypes was called tree police. The video showed a mom saying, like, Garland is like train tracks. They're never supposed to cross. And like she pulled out a tape measure to make sure ornaments were six inches apart or something. And one of my kids was like, mom, that's totally you. And honestly, y'all, I hurt my feelings. So I waited to be, and I was like, wait, you think I'm the tree police? Like with the tape measure and everything? And my kid did not quite catch that that was hurtful to me and laughed and was like, yeah, y'all. Ouch. Like, okay, here's my perspective on how I decorate the tree for context.

When we open up all the boxes of ornaments and stuff, the kids, they start putting on ornaments before we've even done lights and we string garland and all the things that kind of need to come on before ornaments. So I just ask them to wait so we can go in order to make sure everything gets on there. I do encourage them to spread out the ornaments when they put them on the tree because children are just natural ornament clumpers. But never in a million years have I pulled out a tape measure or have I purposely shamed my children for their ornament placement. I see it as just like normal guiding them on decorating the tree so that it's pretty and cozy and we don't have to undo any steps because we went in an unhelpful order. But apparently to at least one of my kids, I am the dude perfect tree.

police. I'm a crazy stereotype. I would never see myself that way, but my kid does. So I share that to say that sometimes our own attitude towards something, it comes off differently to our kids than we mean it to. And while I do think that's normal, that's a normal occurrence. It's something to pay attention to. While I don't mind being a mom that sometimes has standards for things that matter, I also want to be aware that my desire for something, it might come across as more intense than I realize. I'm trying to pay attention to that. And to bring it back to clean rooms, that is one of the things that matters to me about me. I want to teach my kids to notice and empower them to make their own decisions and help them see good orders for things.

But I'm trying to do that with like a lot more relaxation than usual because apparently my usual is still pretty intense. go figure. But that's what matters to me about me. I want to be more loose, more flexible, and I have a posture towards my kids in their rooms that is empowering and encouraging, not, you know, shaming them with metaphorical tape measures, even though I don't hold them. I still can't believe he said I was a tree police. I can't. Whatever. I'll work it out in therapy. It'll be fine. Let's move on. Okay. So that's me. What about you? What matters most to you about you in this process. Do you want to be more consistent, more fair if you have multiple kids, maybe more personalized if you have multiple kids? Do you want to keep your anger in check? Do you want to

avoid avoidance? What matters most to you about you in this process? Allow that to impact your foundational posture as you listen to the rest of this episode and also as you interact with your kids. Okay, we're still in step one. This step actually matters the most, so we're going to spend some extra time here. Okay. So after you name what matters to you about you, you're going to name what matters most to you about your kid. What do you want your kid to feel or experience when it comes to cleaning the room? This does not have to be like super emotional or existential. It could be something like you want them to develop a habit that helps them or you want them to learn to do something basic like make a bed. Your priorities can change over time and should. So just think about

right now. What matters most to you about your kid in this process right now? Now, I would have different answers for all my kids because they're all very different from each other. And that might be true of you. Or you might want something that is consistently true for everybody, you know, obviously you get to choose. In the past for my oldest kid, I would have said the thing that matters most to me about him is that he develops the habit of tending to his room. But we just confirmed he has ADHD. And do you know what I recently learned from a friend who also has ADHD? the ADHD brain literally does not develop habits.

I won't get into the specificity of that because I'm not a doctor. But anything a person with ADHD does that is habitual or rhythmic is due to outside forces like timers, reminders, and visual cues. It is not intrinsic. And I have absolutely been expecting Sam to clean his room habitually like it is intrinsic. Now that I have better information, what matters most is that he learns to utilize timers and visual cues for his room and his stuff. Habits don't make sense for him. Learning to see and respond does. Okay, so what about you and your kids?

What matters most to you about them and their experience with cleaning their room? And then the third area where you want to name what matters most is the room itself. In order to help a kid clean their room, you need to know what clean is. And then they need to know what clean is, right? Clean can be different for everyone, which can be a problem, right? Not only is saying clean your room too big. It could also mean multiple things. And a kid doesn't really know. If you just tell a five-year-old to clean a room, she is likely not going to have any idea what that means or how to break down the task to accomplish it. So in just a minute, we are. going to identify what I'm calling a clean compass because I like alliteration. But first,

you need to name what matters about the room itself. That is going to guide you in creating your own clean compass. Okay. Now, what is, so thinking about what matters most about the room itself, what one thing if it is done in your kids room will make the entire room feel cleaner to you based on what your definition of clean is. Is it that the bed is made? To me, that means nothing. But to some of you, that's like the main thing, right? Is it that the area rug or the floor doesn't really have anything on it, right? Is it that the trash is thrown away? Is there just like usually a lot of trash in your kids' room? Is it that the desk is cleared off? You know, maybe there aren't any clothes on the floor. It might be several or all of the above, but really just try to name one.

name what matters most about the actual cleanliness of your kid's room. So if this one thing gets taken care of regularly, it'll make the rest of the room more tolerable. Okay. So we have done step one, name what matters. And we did that in three important areas. What matters most to you about you? What matters most to you about your kid? And what matters most about the cleanliness of the room itself, okay? Now, let's move on to step two. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime.

I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG private wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you, at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa.

Whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk.

Habaniero? More like Habaniero. There yes, save the everyday with Amazon. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip.

Or that, and enjoy. Via Rail, love the way. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

All right. Step 2. So the definition of clean is very personal, right? But it's also kind of gradual. If you say clean your room to your kid, you probably don't mean deep clean. the baseboards or wash the windows or launder the bed spread, you know. So what do you mean? That's the purpose of step two, which is to create your clean compass. A compass helps us know what direction to go in, right? We need that for cleaning too. So where would your clean compass point? Okay. A compass has four basic directions in north, southeast, and west. And I have always

had actual four levels of clean in our house. So that works out really, really great. I will share our four levels of clean, but you can break your clean compass down however you want. My guess is you will break it down by either levels of clean or by frequency that the thing happens. And honestly, the two align pretty well, but I personally go with the level of clean. So I'm just going to share hours. And then you can kind of fill in the blanks with what is going to work for you in your own situation. Okay. So the first level, level one, is like, it's like a basic,

tending task, right? This is something that is done pretty much every day that honestly helps the room from becoming chaotic faster than necessary. And in our house, level one is dirty dishes and trash. If you have dishes or trash in your room, you are expected to take care of that before you go to bed. That's just like a normal thing. Level one claim is dirty dishes and trash. Now, for you, that basic tending task could be to make your bed or pick your clothes up off the floor, make sure the rug is clear or that there's a path from the door to the bed, you know. What is the most bare bones definition of clean or the thing that you would like for your kids to either do or have help doing on a fairly daily basis?

That is the level one basic tending task on your clean compass, okay? So our level one is dirty dishes and trash. Level two for us is kind of like a quick tidy. this doesn't actually mean that like everything is put away. That's actually later. That's level three. A quick tidy is about basic visual order. And the things that contribute to visual disorder in my kids rooms are trash dishes and clothes.

And if you recall, trash and dishes are level one. So they're tended to pretty much every day. Which means that a quick tidy really just adds one more thing, which is clothes. And they're usually on the floor. So that kind of like takes care of like, hey, can you clean up the floor? It's really pick up your clothes, right? So if the kids don't put away their laundry, that means they don't have a laundry basket to put their dirty clothes in.

And then the dirty clothes, they're just all over the floor, which can definitely contribute to visual disorder in a room, right? It makes it feel dirty. It also makes you react as a parent to a higher level of clean. When just taking care of that one thing in a quick tidy, it can make a huge difference. It's kind of like if you see the bigness, it feels bigger than it is. If you go into a kid's room and let's say there's trash and dishes, but there's clothes all over the floor. And the room feels chaotic.

But really, if you just pick up the clothes, it's going to get better. But sometimes we don't even see that. And so then we just respond to the chaos and we, you know, here comes our big black trash bags again. We're trying to keep those to a minimum, you know? Okay. So for us, level two is just a quick tidy. which really is just taking care of the daily basics of dishes and trash and then adding clothes on top of that. And cleaning up the clothes, like doing that level two, it might happen like,

you know, a couple times a week, like every couple days. And then level three, that is a reset. That's probably the level most closely associated to how we have been conditioned to thinking about cleaning a room. You know, everything has to be put in its place. Now, I love putting things in their place. putting everything in its place is a lazy genius principle. It's helpful and awesome. It does not need to be demonized here. But it might be getting you into trouble if you are expecting a level three reset where everything is put away in a kid's room.

But that kid doesn't yet regularly experience smaller tasks like level one and level two, like the basic tending task or just a quick tidy. Jumping to level three is your baseline. It might be part of your frustration and your kids too. So level three for us is a reset, you know. Now, a reset can mean anything you needed to mean, but for us, it is that everything in the room is back in its place. Maybe Annie has had her cousin over for three days in a row and Barbie paraphernalia has just thrown up all over the room. So a quick tidy, level two, that does not tend to the Barbies on the floor.

But a reset does. Level three reset means we put the Barbie dolls in the dolls basket, you know, the clothes in the clothes basket and the furniture in the furniture. basket. And then once those things are put in their place, the room automatically feels cleaner and feels like it just got a reset. Okay. I've pretty much always used these levels. We use them in the whole house. Now, the fill in is different. Trash and dirty dishes are like for all the places. But really, level two in all the rooms is just like surfaces, you know, coffee table, kitchen table and the floor, just like pick things up off the surfaces. And then level three is a reset where everything is put in its place. Now, so I've used all these levels before. But when I was listening to

Sam Kelly's course, little cycle breakers, she said something like, you have to teach your kids what a reset looks like and it might take a while, something like that. It was such a simple concept. But that was where I had left a step undone. I was assuming my kids knew what all these things meant, they knew what a reset meant. They knew what the quick tidy meant. But they didn't really. They didn't really know. Like I had it in my own head, but they didn't really know what I meant. And so I'm having to teach them and it's slow work, but it's really worth it.

Like ever since I took that course and even just sort of putting together this episode, I've been a lot more intentional with my kids about like being overly specific and repetitive about what levels one, two, and three are. And they're getting it. Like just yesterday, I was like, okay, level two in the room. And Annie goes, trash. trash dirty dishes and surfaces. And I was like, oh my gosh.

All I had to do was just like, take a minute and tell her specifically what it was and encourage her in that. And now she's like remembering. I just have to teach her. She doesn't know it automatically. Like just because I say level two or just because I say tidy. Like that's stupid. So anyway, it's been really helpful.

All right. Now, I, let's go back to the levels. Level three is a reset where everything is put in its place. And I would say this happens like once a week, once every couple weeks. For my kids' rooms, it's less often than in the rest of the house. But really a reset is responsive to the kids' energy or to my own level of tolerance. Right. If I walk in my kids' room and I'm like, I'm going to lose it.

I'm going to lose it in here. Then I just kind of know like, oh, I either need to work on my own ability to tolerate this or let's just encourage a reset, you know, if either thing, if the kid's energy, the room itself or my level of tolerance, if any of those things would benefit from a room reset, then we just do a room reset. But it's not like tied to a specific day or anything like that. It's just kind of sort of as needed. Okay. The fourth level on your cleaning compass is probably not going to happen very often. But it does happen occasionally, and that's the deep clean. you know, that's when you get things out from under the bed. You go through old clothes to see what

fits and doesn't fit. You remove toys that a kid doesn't play with anymore. Usually level four, it leads to a yard sale generally. But here's what we do. All right. So this is important. Listen up. This is important. Because we don't have specific levels of clean, because we don't have our clean compass laid out, we don't prioritize levels one and two, okay? We might unreasonably expect level three all the time. And then we react to a kid's dirty room by forcing a level four. Right? That's big black trash bag energy.

That's everything is going to be different around here energy. Level four does need to happen. But if you focus more often on levels of, one and two, you know, on those basic tending tasks and those quick tides where not everything always gets put away, you're going to be less reactionary. And doesn't that sound absolutely amazing? So step two and all of this is to create your clean compass. If you want to borrow my words, you know, you can use level one, level two, level three, level four, and the kids just know what it is. You can talk about like a basic tending task, a quick tidy, a reset, a deep clean.

whatever you want to call it, you know, choose your own words. And you also can build these around time, you know, like level one is what's done daily. Level two is done weekly. Level three is done monthly and level four is done quarterly or annually or whatever you want to do. Now, for me, that kind of reeks of like old school cleaning energy, like cleaning schedule stuff, which I tend to actively avoid because I don't like people telling me what I shouldn't do, mostly because I feel terrible when I don't do it. But you could handle it like a lazy genius and make your own list, you know, of what your daily, weekly, monthly, and annual task should be based on the season of your life if you want to. But that step two is create your clean compass. What are the four levels of clean and teach your kids

what those are for their own rooms? And it's not going to be as like drastic when it's like time to clean. It's not as desperate when it's time to clean your room. Okay. Now the rest of these steps are like a lot shorter. Okay. So step one is to name what matters to you about you, about your kid and about the room itself. Step two is to create your clean compass so you and your kid know what direction you're walking in. Step three is to be age appropriate. I think your clean compass can work for kids of all ages, but your involvement in those things will change based on the age and even the temperament of your kid. You know, you'll do a quick tidy with your kindergartener, gradually empowering her to do it herself, you know, but be patient with your kids, be age

appropriate in your expectations. This is a long game and you do not need to panic. Be age appropriate. Step four is to start a rhythm. Now, I think the Clean Compass kind of does that already, you know, you just start with that basic tending task. You name what matters and you start that task. You start level one. You can connect to a time where your kids are already. doing something like cleaning up after dinner or getting ready for bed. You know, you can do that level one task when they're already doing something else. So pay attention to the time of day where their energy is, you know, relatively high or where you would personally not mind doing the basic, helping them with their basic tending task. You could also think about how you

feel about your tending tasks. If you personally are like, oh, I do not have the energy to do right now. You know, like if you struggle to make your bed in the morning because you're rushed or because you don't see the benefit, but you expect your kid to have that same energy or motivation, I think it's going to get you both into a little bit of trouble. So start small with that rhythm. You know, start a rhythm, but start small with it. Something super tiny daily to begin and do it for as long as you need to. Okay. And then you could even start thinking about what your clean compass is. what direction can you accurately and confidently send your kid in or walk together with them in to reach a level of clean that you both understand? I don't even know that I start with a deep clean

or a reset of the room and then start small. You know, I think sometimes we want to do that. We're like, oh, I've got this great idea. We're going to start from scratch. I think that's, I think that's too big still. If their rooms are messy, you can start with that daily level. one. It can't get any worse, right? And then you can teach them and yourself the value of those small daily steps. And as they add that level one, they do that level one for a little while, then you can add, you know, that level two kind of quick tidy element that helps you get things in like just enough visual order to not make you crazy or to make them enjoy the room like a little bit more. And then after that, you can start working on what a reset looks like. But I don't know that it's wise to start with like

big old reset, definitely not a level four. But even starting with like a level three reset and then reverse engineering the rest. I mean, that might work for you and your kid best. But I just, I think we need to consider more often starting where we are instead of where we think we should be. And then step five is to be kind. If you have a 14 year old and you haven't done a lot of investment in teaching that kid skills or how to notice or there just haven't been like regular. tasks and responsibilities toward cleaning, don't expect that kid to be able to do more than they currently are. They might be 14, but they're young and their tending tasks, you know? Be kind and patient. Be kind to yourself if you feel like you've dropped the ball on teaching your kids this stuff. Y'all, being a person is

tough. There's so much to juggle and motherhood specifically fragments your brain in ways that you don't even realize. So be kind, please. Be kind to yourself and to your kids. Be patient with them and the process that you're in, be aware that the greater skill you're teaching them is to notice their space kindly and tend to it in a reasonable way today, which also takes the mental load off of you as the mom all the time. Okay, so let's recap. Step one, name what matters. What matters to you about you, about your kid, and about the room itself. Naming what matters about the room itself helps lead to step two, which is your cleaning compass. Create your clean compass. What directions are you walking in? What are these levels of clean? Define what clean means

for you and your own family. Step three, be age appropriate and patient. Step four, start a rhythm. And I would maybe say start a very small rhythm to begin. And then step five, be kind. And that's how to help kids clean their room. or to even help you clean your room. Now, if you would like to check out Sam's Little Cycle Breakers course, we'll have a link in the show notes. I'm an affiliate for her now because I love this course so much. And she generously makes it easy to share and get rewarded for doing that. But I told you all about this course before she offered me that affiliate link.

I like full transparency around here. So while it is an affiliate link, I would tell you to look into Little Cycle Breakers even with that one. Like, it's so good. Okay. before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Kate Walsh. I kind of wish it was Kate Walsh, I don't think it is, but hi Kate Walsh. Kate writes, I'm in a hungry teenage boy season right now, and they love chicken and cheese cassidias. It's important to me to have the ingredients on hand to make them quickly and easily. So I started buying one of the jumbo packs of chicken breast,

trim it with kitchen cheers, then season it, bake it on a large foil covered sheet pan. I shred all the chicken with two forks. I put the amount for one cassidia into a freezer bag and then into the freezer they go. And now I have at least 10 bags of shredded chicken for casidias. Thanks for helping me lazy genius feeding my boys. This is great, Kate. I love it when we find a meal that works well and we can have one thing ready to help it get to the table faster, right? That's me and pickled cabbage, like pickled red cabbage.

If I have pickled red cabbage, somehow I always find my way to mow meal. It's so great. So thank you for sharing your version of pickled red cabbage kate and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. If you'd like to be considered for The Lazy Genius of the Week, you can email us your idea at hello at the lazy genius collective.com. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey.

The Lazy Genius podcast is enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. Thanks y'all for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life,

you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to becoming you wherever you get your podcasts.