Clean Your Room Right Now!

When was the last time that you argued with your child about cleaning their room?

The battle between parents and kids over a clean bedroom has been raging since before the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series – sorry, I’m a Chicago White Sox fan and just had to get a dig in on the Cubs as spring training gets underway.

When you think that you have won the battle as your child begins to clean their room, you quickly get a dose of reality when 45 seconds later your child exclaims that they are done cleaning.

Humoring yourself, you peek your head into their room and you think one shirt might have been picked up off the floor.

Our oldest son usually resorts to the following routine when he is told to clean his room:

• All of the clothes on the floor are rolled into a ball and shoved into the corner of the closet.
• Toys are crammed into his “junk drawer” in one of the dressers.
• Once the junk drawer is full, everything else gets crammed under the bed.
• All done.

There is no doubt that parents and children have very different definitions of what it means to clean a room. When our children are cleaning their room, they will usually ask if it has to be “Mom clean” or their version of clean.

Think back to the last time you had this battle with your children and tell me if the following sounds familiar:

Did you notice the real problem during that conversation? Hint, it happened right there at the end.

Ownership.

This battle is less about actually cleaning the room and more about ownership of space. Parents feel they own the entire house while children are trying to claim ownership of their room. After all, they are regularly told it is their room.

As a parent it can be hard to relinquish complete control to your children, but eventually it has to happen and giving them the ownership of their room can go a long way towards helping them gain a sense of responsibility.

When we constantly demand that they do what we want with their things – their room in this case – aren’t we really saying that we don’t respect their ability to make their own decisions?

There are valid arguments as to why your child should have to clean their room, including:

• What is that smell? Dirty underwear piled over the heat vent doesn’t always smell the best – trust me. If you allow your children to have food in their room, there may be things growing somewhere in there and that is not healthy.

• Being messy can be expensive. When a bedroom looks like a disaster area, it is easy to step on – and break – the Nintendo DS that is buried under Legos and dirty clothes. Games are lost, CDs are scratched. Trying to replace the damaged items is not cheap.

• @#*$! You only need to have a G.I. Joe gun lodged into your foot once to appreciate the ability to walk in a clean bedroom.

Unfortunately, the “because I said so” argument isn’t very valid here – or anywhere to be perfectly honest, hopefully my kids won’t be reading this post.

While I would love to tell you that we have conquered this age-old battle in our house, it is one that has been acted out far too many times. Our kids despise having to clean their room. The mess really drives my wife crazy and while the mess usually doesn’t bother me, I support my wife’s effort to have the kids clean their room.

Ding…ding…ding!

Before this battle has a chance to enter another round, my wife and I are going to explore the idea of having the kids’ bedrooms truly be their space to do with as they see fit.

There will be a couple of ground rules though, as otherwise I would fear for the safety of anyone that steps into our house.

• Every six months their rooms will need a thorough cleaning. This will ensure that they don’t somehow find a way to clone dirty socks that eventually take over the world.
• We reserve the right to not enter their room if we feel it is too messy – see @#*$! above. This means that they might miss out on a bedtime story, at least in their room, if it is too messy.

With the bedroom battle waging on no matter what methods have been used, it is time to transfer ownership of the bedroom and respect the right for our children to have their own space.

Am I being too optimistic?

Please share your stories of how you have approached the battle over a clean bedroom in your house.

Photo credit: Jono Rotten