The Summer holidays are here, and it can be tough to keep your surroundings looking presentable when children are around all the time!
There’s a fine line between keeping them busy and not pulling out every single item they own, not to mention the fact that the time you have to actually clean will become far more limited.
We’ve compiled some suggestions to help you keep on top of things during the holidays.
Start with the organisation of the home
Give toys and activity items homes, so that when something is brought out and used, it has a clear place to go back to. Storage baskets or boxes are a really great way to contain these, especially if they are used often.
You can even make a game of picking them all up and putting them back in before getting more toys out. This helps make it easier to clean around. (Well, Mary Poppins made this look easy, anyway!)
Make a light chore, a game
- Who can make their bed the fastest?
- Who wants to attach sponges to their slippers and gently (and supervised) clean the kitchen floor?
- Does your child like to pretend to hoover, if they’re old enough, maybe try them with the real thing?
- Who can top the best pizza for dinner?
Making these daily activities fun can (potentially) help you out and also keeps them occupied.
Do a daily quick ‘sweep’
If you have the chance, maybe once they’re in bed, try and do a quick sweep around the home to gather any crockery, stray toys and straighten things out.
Doing this is one go means that you are relinquishing control of doing it all the way through the day and only have to do a walk-around once, before having a well-deserved rest, so you can enjoy the evening in slightly tidier surroundings before the next morning.
Schedule in play dates
Don’t be afraid to rely on other people to watch the kids for a while so you can get some jobs done. After all, you can re-pay the favour for them too! Use these times to have a bit of an uninterrupted blitz, to get some actual cleaning done (or have a well-deserved nap).
Pop some good music on and it’ll help you stay motivated. If you have some time left before picking them up, make sure you take some time out to do something for yourself too.
Don’t stress!
Most importantly, don’t put pressure on yourself to have your home pristine constantly, accept that that probably won’t be the case. Sometimes it’s more important that you enjoy the time with your children and less time worrying about the inevitable mess.
As a parent, you are already doing a great job at life – so give yourself a pat on the back and we hope that this article provides a few useful tips to make your Summer slightly easier.
If you’d like to find out how we could help share the load, ask us about our deep clean or regular cleaning services.