New Resolutions for a New Year
Big Thicket Messenger - January 2008

Rule *1: Never tell a child, “Go clean your room.”
It may sound counterintuitive, but it is correct. Telling a child to “go clean your room” is like telling an adult “go clean the garage or the basement”. It is an unfocused and potentially overwhelming request.

Instead direct your child to one specific task: -“Go make your bed” or “Put away all your clothes,” or “Clean everything off the floor”. Marcia Ramsland the “Organizing Pro” and an advisory board member of The Housekeeping Channel, provides the following tips on getting children to effectively clean their room.

Five Steps to a Clean Bedroom
1) Make the bed first: since this is the largest surface, the room is now 50-70% clean.

2( Put everything on the floor away. Start at the doorway and move everything (besides obvious trash) from the floor to the bed.

3) Clean up the rest of the room in three categories.
A. Clothes – put in the hamper or away in drawers and the closet.
B. Papers and books – organize papers in notebooks or a file and place books on the shelves.
Toys or favorite collections – place on open shelves.

4) Add one extra cleaning area per week after the above three steps.
A. Desktop
B. Dresser top
C. Nightstand
D. Closet

 5) Empty the wastebasket often.
Organizing expert Emily Barnes says, “Children don’t do what you expect, but what you inspect.” So check on any cleaning they do.

If you work orderly, you will think orderly. Orderly habits at home can be a great academic help for kids.

About The Housekeeping Channel
The Housekeeping Channel is an online consumer resource for better, faster and healthier  housekeeping. More than 40,000 unique visitors spend as much as an hour on the site each month investigating home cleaning, care guidelines and advice. Founded in 2004, The Housekeeping Channel can be accessed at www.housekeepingchannel.com and on more than 16 million Sprint phones.

About Marcia Ramsland
Marcia Ramsland, speaker, author, professional organizer and an advisory board member of The Housekeeping Channel, is known as “The Organizing Pro” and author of the popular book, “Simplify Your Life: Get Organized and Stay That Way.” Her book is geared to teach the average person step-by-step how to organize and simplify their life like a “Pro.”