CLEAN HOUSE WITH A TODDLER

On the run. On the go. Fast paced never slow. Will this ever end? The house looks like a tornado went through it. How come he won't pick up his toys? Have you ever heard any of these phrases? Do you ever scratch your head after walking on something sticky on the kitchen floor and ask, "Am I ever going to get this house clean again?"

As families grow busier and busier one thing remains the same tried and true. Children are children and will always be children. As adults, we have stressful lives, one parent works while the other is in school, perhaps both parents work, but the one parent at home has too many children to look after to give the house cleaning a second thought. No matter what the situation is, one thing again is true, children are children no matter what the circumstances. How do we then gain a clean and tidy home when our children keep turning it upside down? This is indeed a huge dilemma.

First, understand that children do not have the same attention spam as adults, well most adults. So if your child wants to play with the blocks and then decides to play with trucks then dolls then... soon the living room looks like a toy factory. Then lunch arrives and of course children don't have the eloquent eating habits exhibited by adults, or some anyway, so they spill, drip, drop, reach and drag food onto their sleeves, laps and the floor. The table and floor not to mention the child become a science experiment of how much goop a person and a surface can accumulate. By nap time you're at your wits end and don't know what to do. So you clean up a little hoping the house will stay magically clean. Two hours later the house undergoes another makeover, transformed into a sticky messy labatory and toy factory. What can a frazzled parent or parents do?

As a high strung person, I know when I come home what its like when the baby sitter decides to let our son leave toys all over the floor. I try to keep any stress to myself for the time being. It's hard. Everyone wants to come home to a clean fresh house after a long day, but with toddlers, is this possible? I ask myself this question every day, but I learned something that continues to help me through this process.

Unless you're wealthy and have a live in maid a house that is one hundred percent tidy is an impossibility, but there is a happy above medium state we can endure or perhaps accept. Frazzled and then dazzled, there's hope.

We can do our best to teach our children to clean up even at a young age, but it typically turns out that we're doing most of the work. Don't despair. At least they're learning. In fact, our son loves to bring his once folded laundry into his room only to unfold it again. Or he loves to put clean dishes in the dish washer, plastic ones of course. Is it frustrating? Yes, but he's learning. So while we're teaching and he's learning before we pull our hair out, we have hope.

So what are parents to do to keep the house clean and their sanity while teaching their children to clean up at the same time? First, designate a space that's your own. Do you have an extra room that could be used for an office, a sewing room, a sun porch. Designate that as your room or space. Keep it as neat as you like and keep the kids out as much as you can. At least now you have a clean tidy haven that belongs only to you. Second, keep up the good work and teach the children to clean up. If she wants to help you vacuum, let her supervised of course. If he wants to help with laundry, let him even if it is a little extra sorting and folding. It will pay off eventually. My son is two, so how do I know that it will pay off?

When we were kids, my mother made us do housework when we were fairly young. Did we do a good job? I'm sure for kids we did our best. I dusted, vacuumed, took out the trash and even did windows, and I'm legally blind with enough sight to do quite a few things.

Today, my sister's house is very clean, my brother who has five kids keeps up his house and helps my sister in law quite a bit. My other brother keeps his house very clean, and they all especially the brother with the small children know that a perfect house when the kids are small is not going to happen.

Yes there's hope. So before you cash it in and give the chocolate companies all of your life's savings, keep in mind that the children will be small only for a short moment before they're out on their own. Enjoy them and enjoy each other. Enjoy your home even if it's not the tidiest in the neighborhood. Keep that designated space for yourself and life will go smoother. Oh and another thing, even if you try all of these points and things go smoother, it doesn't hurt to have chocolate once in a while. The best to your families happiness and cleanliness.