How to involve your family to clean?

Living in a family is a warm and comforting experience, yet let's be realistic, it also comes with its’ own set of challenges and difficulties, and one of the issues that we hear time and time again is how to get everybody on the same page with regards to cleaning. Regardless of whether it's people discussing how to get their kids more involved with cleaning or their partners discussing with the other individual – who maybe is excessively clean, or simply not clean enough.

So let’s discuss some ways or methods to get your family engaged when it comes to cleaning.

Before you begin with any of these engagements with family members, you must remember that you may need to have some awkward discussions with them, however in the event that you can meet up and have these discussions, we guarantee you, you will be better off because of it.

SHARED OBJECTIVES

Understanding how clean is defined is a vital place to begin the discussion. The thought is to get everybody in agreement about cleaning and what it means to each of them. This way every person in the family will begin to comprehend what the basic vision and objective ought to be with regards to a spotless house.

Using this technique allows the two parents to compromise and adjust their expectations in accordance with each other. It helps for every one of you to comprehend the other's vision and afterward how you can come to an agreement and make sense of plan and goal that will be acceptable for the both of you.

MOST IMPORTANT PLACES

Deciding which areas are the most critical is critical as you realistically are not going to be doing a thorough deep clean all over the house very often. We don't anticipate that you will anyway, yet what is important is to make prioritize those areas that are crucial for you. These should be the areas that make you a bit more disturbed or irritated when you see them messy or dirty, or help you relax and give you satisfaction when they are well maintained and cleaned.

You have to take a seat at the table with your family and everybody needs to discuss what's critical to them – their most vital areas. In this way, it will give the each individual an understanding in the matter of what they can do to keep their family members cheerful and content with regards to cleaning and orgainizing.

For instance, in your home, the kitchen is extremely vital to you as a most critical area. In particular, the kitchen sink, counter and dishwasher. On the off chance that the dishwasher is still full and there are plates on the counter and the sink is dirty, it can be demoralizing and cause an aversion to do any cooking there. For your significant other, the bedroom may be the most essential area, particularly, the floor which can get cluttered with dirty laundry or with other garments. Thus, you must be respectful of what your partner and other family members prioritize and continually be mindful of their concerns.

WHO LIKES TO DO WHAT?

There's no sense in doling out a cleaning chore to somebody if it will make their head spin with rage. When you're having this discussion, it also makes sense to address what tasks are easiest or preferred by each member of the family – or at least they don’t extremely despise it.

For instance, if you can’t stand cleaning the bathroom, maybe there is someone else in the family that doesn’t mind doing this as much. At the same time, if maybe your partner hates to clean the kitchen and you don’t mind doing it, you can take up this chore on a regular basis and then everyone is happy.

CHALLENGING ROUTINES OR AREAS

This is essentially the time where you discuss your concerns with your family. You get everything out in the open, you let them know whether you think something will be excessively tedious, or disappointing, or troublesome – if there is something that you disagree about or something becomes unrealistic to do – this may cause some negativity for you or your family.

So you must be straight to the point, and you must be straightforward. Get everything out on the table and afterward talk through everything. On the off chance that there's a bundle of cleaning errands that nobody truly loves doing however it's obviously something that should be done, consider something innovative like putting the majority of the assignments in a hat and then everyone takes one out until the point when all of the tasks have been assigned.

The fact is, it must be reasonable, it needs to be fair, and you need to discuss it with the goal that everybody can agree on.

CHANGE YOUR HABITS

A family cleaning routine is something can change over time. Individuals may take tasks on and realize that it's excessively excruciating physically for them, making it impossible to do, or perhaps simply too time consuming. As everyone because accustomed to their tasks, you may need to customize or tweak these chores occasionally due to boredom, the season or other various reasons. Remember to maintain flexibility.  

This is the way you come up with a cleaning schedule that truly works, and in the event that you can do this, everybody in the family will be considerably more productive and happy.

THINK ABOUT YOUR TIMING

Timing is an important consideration when it comes to cleaning since we're all busy individuals. You have a packed schedule during the week and you most likely don't have a huge amount of time to focus your energy on cleaning! There are some of you out there who do absolutely no cleaning at all, so you might ask, how do you get someone to go from no cleaning to getting fully on board one hundred percent?

In this case we don’t suggest that you schedule the person a set amount of time for cleaning such as two hours per week. In this case it may be best to make an incremental change as small as ten or twenty minutes a week. In this way, with regards to timing, be sensible about what time you have accessible during the week and when you can invest that energy. Regardless of whether it's late during the evening, at an earlier hour in the day or on the weekend, whatever works for you and your family (and your timetable) is the thing that you should consider.

If you have an all or nothing mentality or expectations that are to ambitious, you're never going to complete any cleaning and you're simply going to feel like you've failed before you even began. It may be better to set the bar low to begin with, meet that benchmark and after that increase the goal a little bit at a time.

SCHEDULE THE LARGER TASKS

If for example you work at a company that plans it’s strategic events where overall goals and events are scheduled for the forthcoming year, this can provide a framework for you.  

With regards to cleaning, you can apply this approach as well. You can sit down with your family and have a key "cleaning meeting" where you can consider the bigger cleaning assignments that should be finished. For instance, who should be responsible for what tasks and when? Also, how often do certain places in and around your home need to be scheduled for cleaning and or maintanence?

Whatever the answer is, the goal is to address each area and assign accountability to each area or room. This way everyone knows his or her responsibilities and goals. This also allows them to plan in advance and schedule tasks more effectively. Clarity of the communication strategy is the key.  

We hope that these suggestions will help to facilitate an effective and cooperative atmosphere to one of the more mundane or dreaded activities your family needs to address. Who knows, maybe your family will actually bond together over these efforts.

(source: Clean My Space)