No Food in Rooms

Kids can be a bit of a mess sometimes. For some kids, it’s all the time. As your kids grow older, hopefully they start to be a bit cleaner, and pick up a bit more after themselves. Unfortunately, not every child is the same and you may have one child that is really clean while another may not care at all about the mess that they’re making.

For some parents, this is really tough. Having a child who doesn’t like to keep things clean (i.e. a room) it can be challenging to let them do their thing. Ideally, you let your child control the cleanliness of their room - you most certainly shouldn’t be the one cleaning it up all the time. If you’re going to force your child to clean their room, make them help. Even when they’re young, they can help.

If you’re on the other side of the spectrum, and are going to let your kids be responsible for their own room, that’s fine as well. You can let their room be a total mess, and if they can’t find anything in there, then that’s their problem. While you should encourage them to clean up when they’re young, there comes a time where you let them do their own thing.

In either case, the one thing that you should not allow in your kids room is food. The problem with food is that it can easily lead to crumbs in the room and on the floor. Furthermore, unfinished food will be very attractive to little critters and bugs. If your kids have food in their room, it can lead to different things living in your home that you really don’t want living there.

If you want mice living in your house, or to find rotten food after you go searching for the stench in your house, then by all means you can let food into kids’ rooms. Most parents aren’t really excited for those types of things in their home though. Keep the food out.

Even if your kid is a fairly clean child and takes care of their food, it’s easy for crumbs to fall to the floor. There’s this little insect called ants that like crumbs of food (not to mention mice again). It’s certainly possible to keep those insects and creatures out of the house even if your kid does eat in their room, but it’s much harder.

If you have let your kids take food in their room before now, make sure you have a good deep cleaning of the room - you don’t want any food crumbs left from previous adventures that your kids may have had. Once you’ve cleaned the area sufficiently, don’t allow food in their rooms again. Make sure your kids understand why you’re making the rule as well. They’ll be more willing to follow it if they understand that you don’t want little critters in their room.

Keeping food out of your kids bedroom is a straightforward tactic, but it will help to keep your home nice and without little friends. Enjoy food together as a family when possible, and if not then at least make sure everyone is enjoying their food in the kitchen.