In honor of National Clean Up Your Room Day on May 10, Merry Maids of Beaufort has some ideas to motivate kids and adults to keep a cleaner room.

<b>Make A Contest of It:</b> Chances are, your room could use some cleaning, too. If not, there’s probably another space in your home that you’ve been meaning to conquer. Assign everyone in the family a room or a space to clean and set a time limit. Then, ask a neutral party to judge. Take before and after pictures and send them to the judge if no one neutral is around. You may even consider raising the stakes by posting the pictures to Facebook and letting all your friends decide. The prize can be an outing of the winner’s choice, but something that will be enjoyable for everyone.

<b>Detail What Needs To Be Done:</b> This is especially helpful for younger children, but it’s true for older kids, too. Instead of just saying “clean your room,” give them a clearly defined list of what to do: make your bed, put dirty clothes in the hamper, place books on the shelves and toys in the bins, etc. If your child is unable to read, draw a picture of each task and allow him or her to cross it off or erase the picture upon completion.

<b>Let Them Control Their Space:</b> You probably don’t love the idea of handing over complete artistic control of their rooms to your children, but you could let them decide the types and styles of bins they use to store their things. They are far more likely to get excited about stashing their toys in a Monsters University bin they picked out themselves.

<b>Pick Your Own Clean-up Song:</b> Pick one or a few kid-friendly, upbeat songs that neither you nor your child will tire of quickly and designate that your Clean-Up playlist.  The music will make cleaning up more fun and eventually when your child hears it, he or she will automatically know it’s time to tidy.