Sheets should be changed a minimum of once a week. The oils from your skin and hair products from your head rub onto pillow cases and the bottom sheet, dead skin cells are shed, providing a 10 course meal for those dust mites, and they all reside in bed sheets. If you don’t wash your body before you go to bed, you are taking to bed a whole day’s worth of grime.

If you look at it, you are in those sheets for 56+ hours per week. Would you wear the same T-shirt that long? No! It would smell, it would have stale deodorant, BO, sweat etc. 56 hours of oil and sweat is a lot!

In the summertime when you sweat more, or you don’t have or use air-conditioning, it’s advisable to change them more often.

Strip the bed off of completely. Take off all the blankets and sheets weekly to air out the mattress. You can sprinkle bicarb on the mattress to absorb odour and vacuum it off later. Or if you like fabric refreshers, spray the mattress lightly and allow to dry.

Quilts and blankets should be washed once a season. Since they don’t come into contact with skin and bodies so much as the sheets, they don’t need washing so often. Of course this is up to personal preference and depends on the person. Little children who still have night-time accidents will need their bedding changed a lot more often than once a season.

Polyester quilts can be thrown into the washing machine and washed on a gentle cycle. Hang them up immediately and let the sun dry it out. Cotton blankets can be washed in the machine as well. Watch out for woollen quilts and down quilts. These need to be dry-cleaned. Check instructions on the tags for cleaning before doing it. I washed a woollen quilt once in the machine (didn’t read the instructions…) and it shrunk. It was like a double quilt on a queen size bed. Very annoying!

If you have a problem with a member of your family problem dropping their dirty clothes in a pile on the floor, you’ve probably tried getting them to use a clothes hamper. No matter how much you nag them, if the hamper is in a cupboard out of sight then it won’t get used.

The simplest way to fix the problem is: grab a clothes hamper and put it where the person undresses!

Bedside tables, dressing tables, chest of drawers, etc. make the room look cluttered and messy when they have “stuff” all over them. It is best to have these surfaces as clear as possible to make the room look tidy. It requires some discipline, especially if you are naturally messy (like me!!). Just remember to put things that aren’t being used away.

Remember that this is your bedroom, and it’s expected to look “lived in”. It’s ok to have a pile of books you are wading through sitting on your bedside table. If you must have things on the surfaces, make sure they are neat to make the room look neat. If things are put in their right places all the time, the room shouldn’t need too much work. Remember your home is not a show home; it needs to have some evidence of a family living there!

~Train a child in the way they should go.~ Proverbs

If you want your kids to be tidy, it’s unlikely they will become tidy without any effort on your part. It’s a learned behaviour, and you will have to either teach them, or put up with picking up after them. But there are things you can do to make the whole process a lot easier.

Less Toys

If you can, divide their toys up and put away some of the toys. The less toys they have, the less mess they make. Less mess = less overwhelming feelings at the end of the day, and they can efficiently and effectively pack them away. This sort of system has more benefits than just helping keep the mess under control:

1. It prevents boredom: kids with too many toys don’t know what to do with themselves, because it’s too overwhelming (especially in younger tots).
2. The novelty of their toys lasts longer. I pulled out an old toy my daughter hadn’t seen in a month, and you would think we just gave her a brand new toy! She played with it a lot and really enjoyed it. If the toys are all out, the kids get used to them being there and get bored with them quickly.

Dirty Clothes

Have dirty clothes hampers in the kids’ rooms and teach them to use it. When my daughter was 3 she was already sorting her own washing and putting them into the right colour baskets. Labelling the clothes baskets will help them use the right ones.

Teach kids to respect their clothes by treating them with the proper care due. If they are dirty then being on the floor and getting trodden on is not the way to get them clean and take care of them. It also will save you picking up after them.

If you are in a rush and just don’t have time to tidy your room, spend a moment to make your bed.

The bed is the largest piece in the room, and when it looks neat and tidy the whole room will look dramatically less messy.

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