Category: Green Home & Garden

Now that you’ve got rid of all those nasty, dangerous chemicals, your kids can help you keep the house clean! But how can you get them to do so, without resorting to bribes, yelling, and dire threats?

I am writing specifically with the kids in mind, but I think these tips can be extended to apply to roommates and husbands as well.

1. Start early. If your kids can’t remember a time when they weren’t expected to pitch in, they won’t complain about it.
2. Tailor the task to the age. The oldest brings the laundry in from the line and distributes clothing to the room in which it belongs; the middle child matches up socks and puts those away; the youngest folds napkins, placemats and washclothes. Everyone gets a job that fits their capabilities and they can feel they do well.
3. Give compliments….Kids should feel good about their contribution to family harmony.
4. But don’t overdo it. Remember that you want this to become a commonplace habit, ideally to the point where chores undone will just not “feel right” to everyone involved. Give praise when jobs are particularly well-done, or when you didn’t have to remind them to do something, or when they helped a sibling.
5. Don’t complain. It starts with you. The more you act like cleaning is horrible, horrible stuff, akin to slavery, the less your kids are going to want to do it. Of course, I’m not saying you have to pretend you love it, either. Just that it needs to be done and nobody likes a martyr.
6. Trade off jobs. When the kids mop, one sprays the floor down with cleaner, paying attention to dirty spots. One mops. One dries. Every room, they trade off so everyone gets a chance at the good job and does their time on the bad job. (Note: the good job and bad job seems to change all the time, for no particular reason.)
7. Let the kids do the adult jobs sometimes. Once I cut my hand open and didn’t want to do the dishes. My kids were delighted to do it. They have asked to be allowed to do it ever since. Sometimes they will make dinner. Sandwiches and salad, to be sure, but kids like to feel that they have done something truly helpful.
8. Let them do it their own way. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Remember that the goal is establishing habits and making life easier in the long run.
9. Don’t hover. Be resigned, in the beginning, to going back and getting the bits they missed, but don’t ever let them catch you doing it. This undermines the confidence in younger ones, and leads older ones to think that a so-so job is good enough because you’re just going to redo it anyway. But let them do their job, without you breathing down their neck.
10. Relax your standards. If you are crazy nit-picky, your family will conclude that there is no pleasing you. Pick one thing and let the others go. My pet peeve is socks on the floor. I have put everybody on notice. If I find socks on the floor, that person is in trouble and he knows it, but it is fair for me to be mad because he had fair warning. But if you have a laundry list of things that will make you mad, then you will always be after your kids to remember to do things. They will not be able to keep track of it all. That sets up a vicious cycle where you’re always critical, so they give up; on your end, it feels like nobody is trying, so you become resentful. I speak from experience: Let it go.
11. If you need to, make “supervisor” a job. Have one kid vacuum, then have the supervisor point out the spots missed. Kids will delight in showing their siblings their mistakes, and your floor will be very well vacuumed. Make sure this job gets traded off fairly, and use it sparingly.
12. Make daily chores routine. Obviously the table needs to be set and cleared every night, but sometimes we’re tempted to let room cleaning or countertops slide. That’s how we sentence ourselves to a beautiful Saturday wasted on cleaning. Have everyone chip in every night to clean the community areas, and every night spend five minutes picking up their own bedrooms. Daily maintenance will make weekend power cleaning a breeze.
13. Make weekend cleaning routine, too. Our kids have free time until noon on the weekend. At noon, the TV goes off and they owe me an hour of intensive cleaning. For them, that means floor mopping, vacuuming, and really cleaning their rooms. Since they know for a fact that there is no wriggle room on the 12:00-1:00 time slot, they don’t bother to argue. Plus, they enjoy a clean bathroom as much as anyone else.
14. Make it fun. Play loud music. Sing off-key. Dance.
15. Make it worth their while. Having less housework to do means I have more free time. I use that time to bake goodies for lunchboxes, and to make brunch on Sundays. My kids have a hard time complaining about cleaning when their mouths are full of the pancakes their father and I made while they were tidying. Note: I don’t tie chores or housework to an allowance. This falls under the category of “social responsibility”, which is an unpaid obligation, and it applies outside the home, too.
16. Set an example. You can’t expect kids to keep their rooms clean when your office is a mess.
17. Keep it consistent. Cleaning a bedroom every night is doable. Let the mess pile up for a week, though, and you really can’t expect kids to handle it. It’s just too much; they’re not equipped to figure out where to begin. Same with the weekly mop: if it’s done every week, I can be reasonably sure they’ll do a good job. Leave it for a month, and now we’re dealing with serious grime, and I’m going to be the one applying the elbow grease.
18. Be consistent time-wise, too: I try to always have dishes done by 7:30 so I have time to read to my daughter and have lights-out by 8. If it’s 7:25 and I still have a sinkful, my husband will often grab a towel and start drying without being asked, because he can see I’m behind schedule.
19. Have less stuff. Seriously. It took me years to see the simple wisdom here. If you can’t keep the clutter under control, you have too much stuff. The less stuff you have, the less time you spend picking it up and putting it away.
20. Know when to stop. Be reasonable. No matter how dirty the house is, at 1:00 on Saturday, we are done, excepting the everyday stuff like laundry. The rest of the day stretches invitingly in front of us, guilt-free. We have done our time, the house is clean enough for today, let’s go out and play.

I cannot overemphasize how much setting up schedules and routines simplified our life. It just becomes a part of your daily rhythm and muscle memory. One day you will find that you cannot go to sleep with clothes thrown on the floor. You will automatically wash out the coffeepot and put it away without even registering the act. And you will look around your house in amazement, because it is clean, and yet you have free time.

I only started these measures about six months ago, when I simply had had enough. I would spend all day Friday cleaning, and Monday morning I would survey a house worse than it was before I started.

The kids grumbled at first. My husband shrugged me off. I kept going. I think it took about eight weeks before they- and I- realized it wasn’t just a passing phase, that I was serious, that this was important to me. They did their part, grudgingly. Then, it slowly became habit, and the complaining stopped. I had more time to cook, to read. I became a nicer mom. I was starting new projects, I was excited about things, I was more fun to be around. I think on some subconscious level the family wanted to reinforce that, so they in turn became more helpful.

And now, we’ve hit a point where if things get messy, it bugs us, and nobody complains when we schedule an hour of extra cleaning time. Because we’ve become used to having a clean house, and the serenity, the peace of mind, that comes with it, and we are willing to put in a little extra time in to have that.

But it’s not just about a clean house. It goes beyond that, too.

More thought along that line in tomorrow’s segment:

Green Cleaning and Social Responsibility.

Also see Green Cleaning 101 to review what cleaning products we use.

Cleaning your house with environmentally friendly household products saves you money, cuts down on clutter, makes your life much less complicated, and cuts down dramatically on chemical exposure. It is the epitome of simple, green, organic, happy living.

I am not going to beat you over the head with statistics about the chemicals involved in household cleansers. I am only going to say that with lead paint on our toys, pollution in our air, traces of prescription drugs in our tapwater and residual pesticides in our clothing and linens, I am not going to use something to “clean” my house that is labelled Warning: Toxic. Keep out of the reach of children.

To me, that says, Poison. Do not keep in house.

Switching over to safer cleaning was easy. It made my life simpler and freed up a whole shelf in my linen closet. I can now delegate a fair portion of the cleaning to my children without fearing that they will sear their lungs or go blind. My husband enjoys the “mad scientist” element of mixing up his own cleansers. And you can customize the fragrances, strengths, and appearance to your liking.

Here’s what we use:

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. Vegetable-based and biodegradable, it is ultra-concentrated and will last forever.

• Use it straight for: handwashing, clothing, dishes, bathing and shampooing of pets and humans ( remember that a little goes a long way!)
• Add a teaspoon to a spray bottle filled with water for all-purpose cleaning: tabletops, counters, fingerprints on walls, spot treatment on carpets, everyday bathroom cleaning.
• Use the tea tree or eucalyptus varieties for extra antiseptic qualities, or
• Use the fragrance-free baby variety and add 20 drops of your own essential oils for scent.
• In general, the longer you allow this to sit after spraying, the less “elbow grease” required.
• These soaps do not foam up like you may be used to, which saves considerable amounts of time and water during rinsing.

Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds is an all-purpose cleanser that has that familiar scent of pine. It is specifically made for surface cleaning and is probably a better choice if you do not plan to use it as a hand or bath soap.

• This is our floor cleaner, again using one teaspoon in a spray bottle filled with hot water.

20 Mule Team Borax is excellent for heavy-duty bathroom cleaning.

• Just pour some onto a sponge or rag and scrub away. It is non-abrasive and does not cause your hands to become red and swollen, like what I used to use.
• Pour some into toilet bowl and let sit overnight, give a quick swish in the morning.
• You can also add borax to your laundry to boost your detergent’s cleaning and whitening power.

Vinegar and water in a spray bottle:

• works as a general disinfectant (vinegar smell dissipates when dry, or add 20 drops of essential oil for scent and extra antiseptic qualities.)
• is great for cutting through bacon grease residue on your stovetop.

Club soda in a spray bottle:

• Is a great mirror and window cleaner without the horrible fumes.
• keeps stains from setting.

Baking soda is known to soak up odors in the fridge. Also:

• use instead of a Brillo to scrub pots and pans (if it’s really bad, pour baking soda on when pan is still hot and let sit throughout meal or overnight.)
• sprinkle onto carpets and let sit overnight to absorb pet odors, vacuum in morning.
• for kitchen sink drain maintenance, pour in some baking soda, then pour in vinegar for exciting foamy action; follow up with a kettle of boiling water.

Lemon juice quickly gets the onion smell off your hands so you can rub your teary eyes. Or:

• Freeze lemon juice in ice-cube trays and run through your garbage disposal to keep it sharp and smelling fresh. (Lemon peel and regular ice cubes also does the trick.)
• Combine lemon juice and water in a bowl and microwave for a minute; allow to cool; wipe microwave clean.
• One part lemon juice to two parts olive oil can be used as a natural wood cleaner.
• Not a cleaning tip, but good to know: Dip cut apple slices into lemony water to keep them from browning in kids’ lunchboxes.

Houseplants are an easy way help keep your air clean and fresh, and they just make you feel better about yourself.

• I highly recommend an aloe plant in your bedroom, because they release extra oxygen at night, when you’re breathing deeply. After a full year of extreme negligence, ours is still alive, lush and enormous; and you can use the aloe as an emergency lotion or sunburn treatment.

Spray bottles and a bucket to keep everything together can be found at your local dollar store. Dr. Bronner’s and essential oils are available online and can be found at health and organic stores; we get ours from Trader Joe’s.

I cut old towels into rags in lieu of sponges, and wrap one around our old Swiffer for mopping.

Tomorrow I’ll post about how to get your kids to do their share of the cleaning!

“Our house is clean enough to be healthy,
and dirty enough to be happy.”
-Anonymous

Further reading:

Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck
Clean House, Clean Planet by Karen Logan offers up cost analysis in addition to recipes
How to Grow Fresh Air by B.C. Wolverton classifies 50 houseplants by how effectively they clean your air and by ease of upkeep.

For a comprehensive list of essential oils and their properties, click here.

This post was first in a three part series. You may also like:
Green Cleaning 101: Family Edition, or
Green Cleaning and Social Responsibility.