This post contains affiliate links.

My mom loaned me her laminator once. Needless to say, I did not get enough sleep that night.

(I think it’s this one here. And just a warning: laminators are really cheap to buy, but you have to watch for sales on the laminating pouches or you’ll end up spending a fortune. Because laminating. It’s addictive.)

OK, I know what you’re thinking: please tell me this isn’t a post about what you laminated.

That’s crazy. In my mind, this could be a whole SERIES about the things that I laminated. In fact, it occurred to me briefly that I could do an entire new blog dedicated to all the things you should laminate, but then I thought — maybe not so eco-friendly? I mean, laminating as a lifestyle — that’s a lot of plastic. But a few laminated papers are okay? Maybe?

You can tell a lot about a person by what they choose to laminate. For example, my husband is a person who loves to bake, so now he has all of his recipes printed out, laminated, and hanging on a hook in the kitchen. What does this say about him? It says that he’s married to a woman that’s sick of him looking up his recipes on the computer when she’s trying to watch Netflix.

And me? The very first thing that I laminated was the “Teach Your Kids to Clean Their Bedroom in Ten Minutes” printable from HowDoesShe.com. What does this say about me? Probably that we’re one stuffed animal away from a polyester bonfire in the backyard. And it would be a huge fire, because seven-year-old Harbour has FIVE bins of stuffed animals.

Harbour has a hard time keeping her room tidy with all those toys, and having me as a mother is no help. You know that I’m super disorganized. It’s just not my gift. Add four messy family members to the mix and I’m drowning in paper scraps, dirty dishes, and laundry piles. And that’s all by Monday afternoon, even though I insist on a clean house for Sundays.

I want my kids to be better at cleaning than I am, but I struggle with how to teach that.

And it’s not like I haven’t tried. Back when our oldest, River, was just four or five, I’d send her to her room to clean it. She wouldn’t clean it though; she would cry until I either came in to help her or cry until I gave up and let her play. It was usually a combination of me cleaning and her playing.

One day I vented on Facebook about how completely frustrated I was, and some friends clued me into the fact that she was a bit too young to take on cleaning a whole room by herself. Really? I honestly had no idea. From them on, I’ve tried to give her a hand — but nothing ever really improved. She never learned to clean the room herself unless I was there to direct her.

I had the same trouble with Harbour. When she was 6 years old, I felt like she was more than capable of cleaning her room — but all she did was shove stuff under the dresser and the bed. Sure it looked neater (as long as you were standing upright), and yes, I felt better because I was able to vacuum most of the carpet, but it wasn’t really clean and tidy in the way I wanted.

Why couldn’t my kids get this? It turns out that I needed to actually teach them how to clean, and the Teach Your Kids to Clean in 10 Minutes printable HowDoesShe.com was a game changer for us. Suddenly we had a list of steps to follow each and every time, breaking the overwhelming task of cleaning a messy bedroom into predictable, manageable tasks.

It’s amazing. And that’s why it’s the first thing that I laminated and that’s why I want to share it with you.

How To Clean a Kid’s Bedroom

Let me take you through the steps.

First, we sweep everything off the bed and make it. Harbour generally enjoys this step, but for some reason River hates it, and in her mind, every single thing that’s on the floor is only there because I just chucked it off of her bed. That means the whole messy room is 100% my fault. But we press on.

Second, we put all the clothes — dirty or clean — back on the bed. This step is even more enraging for River because now the freshly made bed is messy again. She complains bitterly every. single. time.

The third step is to put away all the toys or books that belong in the room. For Harbour and Forest’s room, this couldn’t be easier. We have the Trofast bins from Ikea, so it’s a matter of tossing toys into the right one.

OK, back to that stuffie bonfire idea for a second — how toxic do you think the smoke would be if they caught fire? By “accident”, I mean? I guess the kids might catch on when they hear me call the city for a fire permit. Or see me dragging bins of toys into the backyard with a matchbook and a bag of marshmallows.

Well, until I figure out a way to rid the house of 47 stuffed unicorns and all of their friends, we keep them all in Trofast bins from Ikea. In an attempt to keep things simple, I don’t even sort the toys much. If it’s plastic, stick it in the one plastic bin. If it’s silky, but it in the playsilk bin. If it’s cuddly, stick it in ANY other bin. 

During step three, we come across a lot of things that don’t belong in the bedroom; we just designate a basket or a hamper for this and toss in all the stray toys, measuring spoons, half-filled shampoo bottles, watermelon seeds, and missing remote controls that we come across. I think of it as an amnesty basket: I won’t ask questions about why any of this stuff is in the room — I’m just happy to get it back. But the stud finder, Harbour? Really? Do you know how long we’ve been looking for this?

The fourth step is to get rid of the garbage. This can be a difficult step if the kids have been drawing a lot. We generally put all the papers in a pile, sort the keepers out, and then recycle the rest of the papers. I drag the recycling bin right into the bedroom so anything that will be discarded is put right into the bin immediately.

The last and final step is to sort the dirty from the clean clothing. This is another skill I’m working on with my kids. Grass stains? Dirty. Cat hair? Dirty. Nothing? THEN IT DOES NOT GO IN THE HAMPER! Eventually, the clean clothes get put away and the laundry is moved to the hallway.

And that’s it — the room is tidy. This system doesn’t always take us 10 minutes — not by a long shot. Timing depends on whether we’ve kept up throughout the week. But for me it’s not so much about the time span. What I love about this checklist is that no matter how messy the room is, we know where to start.