4 Tips For A Clean House With Toddlers

I didn’t realize how much a of challenge this was when I only had one child. M was so neat and clean that we rarely had issues with food on the kitchen floor and other random places of the house. I mean obviously we still had to help her put toys away regularly, but that was the extent of what we did differently with one child.

Then I had twins! People generally say “double the trouble,” but honestly sometimes it feels like more than double. They are way messier; dropping food on the floor intentionally or missing their mouths so much there’s a whole meal in their high chair. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. So here are some tips I use to try to keep my house as clean as possible.

Clean After Each Meal

It is so tempting after spending the time making breakfast and then feeding breakfast to just leave those dishes sitting. But the easiest way to clean stuff is to do it when it’s fresh and before it hardens. So I do my best to at least rinse my dishes, bibs, and high chair trays before I leave the kitchen.

When our dishwasher broke I was really good about running the dish water and just getting everything cleaned so it didn’t pile up at the next meal. For some reason now that we have a new dishwasher it almost seems more labor intensive to have to unload the dishwasher before I can reload it. This is especially true when the kids need my attention. So I do as much clean up as I can in 10-15 minutes and then move on.

The other thing that needs to be done after every meal, at least at my house is sweeping. Like seriously, I have never swept so much in my life. Cheerios are excellent at keeping my girls busy while their food cools or I finish cooking. However, they are the worst for clean-up. One of my girls likes to swish them around on her tray knocking them to the floor. Then I ignorantly walk over grounding them to powder under my feet. So sweeping at least around their seats is a necessity.

Get the Kids Involved

One way I keep M busy is having her help me with things. She loves being helpful and it gives her the attention she craves. These obviously need to be age appropriate. You also have to be patient with kids because they probably aren’t going to do it to the quality that we would prefer.

At two and a half, M does a fair job at holding the dustpan when I’m doing all of that sweeping. But one of her great strengths, is helping put dishes away. I have taken somewhat of a Montessori approach to the kids things (I got the idea here). Her dishes, silverware, and cups are all on an exposed shelf that she can reach. Part of this was because we had no other space in the kitchen and part of it was intentional. With the dishes exposed, she is able to stack her plates, put her silverware in the tray, and put her cups together. I have also let her sort the regular silverware (spoons and forks only) into our silverware caddy. I love that this is teaching her a sense of responsibility as well as giving us a little bit of time together.

Have a Place For Everything

This probably seems obvious, but it really makes a difference when the toys start piling up. If you don’t have a place for things to go, then they will always be out and underfoot. As our girls have gotten older and accumulated more stuff, we had to plan where each new item would live. We now have two toy bins in the living room, one in M’s room, and a toy organizer in the basement. My goal is always that when we transition from one area of the house to another, that we put everything away. We are not perfect. But when you have a place for things to go it makes clean-up faster.

I have recently started playing a clean-up song for M when it’s time to clean-up the basement. This area gets the messiest because it’s where the twins roam free and they just drag toys from one place to another. But with the song playing on the TV, the two of us can usually get the whole room back in order in under five minutes. This is pretty impressive to my way of thinking. A month or so ago I cleaned that same room instead of exercising so I was using my fitness tracker and it took me 30 minutes. Now that was partly because I vacuumed, but it was mostly because it took that long to get the room into the position to be vacuumed.

Maintaining is Easier

Using that example of our basement: now that I did one deep clean, it is so much easier to keep the room clean. When I deep cleaned, I got rid of a bunch of stuff that we no longer needed. Some of it I sold and other things were donated. Now, everything we have has a place and all we have to do is put it there.

The same goes for the kitchen. If I’m regularly sweeping and mopping the floor, the next time I go to sweep or mop there is less I have to contend with. There’s no more scraping unidentifiable food objects off of the floor just to be able to get a decent mopping in, because nothing is allowed to sit that long.

Another thought on home cleaning maintenance is scheduling it. Plan what time(s) of the day you will clean and stick to it. For my mom that’s never going to bed with dishes in the sink. She will stay up late washing the dishes so that she knows when she wakes up in the morning she can enter a clean kitchen with an empty sink. For me, its straightening the living room after putting my girls to bed. The living room is the central part of my house; you can’t go anywhere in the house without seeing it. So it is really helpful and encouraging when it is clean and neat.

Give Yourself Grace

Finally, don’t be too hard on yourself. Understand that having small kids is only for a season and you wont be stepping on cheerios forever. I recognize that on any given day/moment, my house is not ready to be photographed for a magazine cover. And that’s OKAY! Sometimes I just have to be settled in the fact that if I need a drink in the middle of the night I can walk to the kitchen and back with out stepping on anything. Whatever your standard is, be confident in that. If you miss it every now and then, don’t be too hard on yourself.