Getting your kids to clean their rooms is such a hassle, that many parent’s wind up cleaning it themselves after a long battle, only to do it all over again next week. Learning the right way to teach a child to clean his/her own room won’t just keep the house cleaner, but it will free up all that time spent arguing for more fun parent child activities.

Teaching child to clean his/her own room isn’t just about having a clean home, it’s also about learning valuable life skills like organization and time management.

If you send your child to clean their room, and an hour later find them reading, it might not be them ignoring you. Cleaning isn’t something that everyone is born knowing how to do, and kids might get overwhelmed by the mess and not know where to start. Help your child learn how to clean by guiding them.

If your child has a plan of attack, it will be easier for them to get started and keep going. Start with making the bed, and once that’s done have them go around and collect all the dirty laundry in a laundry basket.

Depending on the age of the child, the next step might be gathering up all the toys into a toy bin, putting all the books and magazines on a bookshelf, or organizing their electronics or video games.

Once the sprawling disaster is under control, then have them start in one corner and, working clockwise around the room, they can clear desktops, organize shelves, and wipe down surfaces. Finish things off with a quick vacuum and they’re done.

Positive rewards for a clean room are very helpful. Instead of negative rewards (clean your room or you can’t go to the party, clean your room or no dessert), positive rewards give children a positive association with cleaning. Wow, what a clean room, why don’t we go for ice cream, or how about you get to stay out an extra hour tonight? These will make kids think of cleaning as less of a punishment.

It might not look as nice as if you’d done it yourself, but the skills they learn by cleaning their own room will help them out later in life.