You have teenagers in your house. Our sympathies go out to you. It can be extremely difficult to deal with teenage angst and attitudes, and trying to get them to help clean and keeping up with the regular cleanliness of your house can feel like herding cats.
Here are a few helpful tips that may just help with that. Keep in mind, though, that even if everything is going smoothly and you have your teenagers helping to vacuum, wash down the windows, do the dishes, and throw out the garbage, and more, it’s still a good idea to have your carpets professionally cleaned at least once a year, if not every six months.
Now, let’s get to those helpful tips.
Tip #1: Make it a competition.
Teenagers are competitive by nature. If you have a couple of teenagers, and if they are extremely competitive, you can create a game out of the cleaning issues. They can earn tokens, points, and more every week. Keep the chart, like you might have when they were much younger, and they can boast or gloat to each other, if that’s what they want to do.
Tip #2: Offer a reward.
Allowance is one thing, and a token economy system is something else. If you want to inspire your teenagers to get involved in cleaning, you might want to offer a monetary reward, something they can measure quickly, receive right away, and spend however they wish.
Tip #3: Explain how a dirty environment affects their health.
Some teenagers get sick frequently. Others never seem to get sick at all. If your teenagers are like the latter part of this example, they may not care how dirty their room is, but when you explain that the majority of dust inside the house is actually dead skin cells, and how some of the other particulates can affect their health and allergies, they might actually become a bit more inspired to help you keep this house clean.
We hope some of these tips help because we know how difficult it can be to keep up with the cleanliness of the house when you have teenagers constantly running around and in and out.
