It’s fun to design a bedroom both with and for a child. Children like to choose bright colour schemes, themed bed linen and novelty beds. Bookcases and toyboxes in matching or complementary shades are useful for storing smaller items, while clever lighting and ceiling decorations can add a magical, fairytale touch. Then when the ideal bedroom is completed, disaster happens – a child moves in! The delightful, appealing ambiance that took days and hours to create then becomes several big, messy heaps of ‘stuff’ in a matter of minutes.
Such is the reality of family life that getting the child in question to clean up their room on a regular basis is as much a chore for the long-suffering parent as it seems to be for the youngster who is asked to do it. Parents who decide to ignore the mess are faced with the problem of trying to clean around it, however, there are a couple of things to try that will make life a lot easier – here are a few tips on what to look out for.
Start as you mean to go on
Encouraging children to treat tidying their room as a game, and selecting easy to clean design ideas right from the start will be beneficial all round. Washable paint or wallpaper will be a big help, particularly if a child’s bedroom is used for ‘messy play’ that involves paints, colouring or sticking together parts to make models, for example. Similarly, while wall-to-wall carpet might be ideal for a cosy adult bedroom, when decorating for a child a surface that is easy to clean is more practical. This maybe a wooden floor, for example, which can be easily swept, or linoleum or tiles, which can be washed. All these smooth floors can also be tackled with a vacuum cleaner.
Windows and doors are easy to deal with if washable paint is used on frames and sills. Curtains can be a problem if they have to be washed frequently because sticky little fingers have been playing with them. Wooden shutters are a great alternative, not just because they, too, can be treated with washable paint but also because those with movable louvres provide excellent light control to help darken a child’s bedroom in preparation for sleep. In this respect they are just as good as blackout blinds, and much easier to clean.
Furniture
To make cleaning simple, it’s not necessary to fill a child’s bedroom with wipe-clean plastic furniture (although this has its advantages) but simply to choose items that have smooth lines and the minimum amount of awkward corners or fiddly details such as grooves or fancy carving, as these will attract dust and dirt. When shopping for children’s bedroom furniture, it pays to imagine how easy it will be to clean. After all, Cinderella spent years cleaning and tidying for her stepmother and ugly sisters before she found her Prince Charming and moved to a dream bedroom – but that doesn’t mean parents and children need to do the same.