Cleaning your room can seem like such a chore, can’t it? Cleaning your room can take a good bit of work and often has to be done when you want to do something else. But if you do a good job cleaning and then just maintain your room, you won’t have to clean it nearly as often. Follow this checklist to clean your room well and keep it clean in the future.

Put Dirty Clothes in the Hamper

You probably have at least some dirty clothes on the floor, and cleaning them up will really help your project. Take your dirty socks, shirts, pants, and other clothes and throw them in the hamper. If your parents have different hampers for sorting your clothes, make sure you put them in the right place: white clothes with white clothes and colored clothes with colored clothes. You might find some dirty clothes that have been sitting there a while and now stink. It would probably be a good idea to tell your parents about those in case they need to be pretreated for the laundry.

Put Clean Clothes Away

It’s also likely that you have some clean clothes lying around your room. Put those away next. Hang up your shirts and other hanging clothes in your closet. Fold and put in your dresser drawers anything that has to go in the dresser. If you can’t tell if it is clean or not, give it a smell. If it smells clean, it’s clean; if it smells bad or you can’t decide whether it smells clean, put it in the hamper.

Put Toys and Trash in Their Place

Hopefully, you have bins, containers, or other storage places in which to put your toys. Put each toy in its proper place according to how the bins are labeled or how your parents have told you to keep them. Don’t just put things in any old place. If you put something in the wrong spot, you’ll have trouble finding that toy or that piece of a toy later on. If you don’t have individual containers or bins for each kind of toy you own, you might want to ask your parents to help you get some because they make cleaning and organizing so much easier. While you’re putting toys away, throw away any trash you find.

Remove the Stuff That Doesn’t Belong

By now, the only toys and other stuff that should be on your floor or on your bedroom furniture are the things that don’t go in your room. Take those things to the room where they belong. If they are toys that belong to your brother or sister, go the extra step and put them in the right bin in your brother’s or sister’s room. Just make sure that you take these extra things to the right location in your home; otherwise, you’ll just make it harder to clean other rooms.

Clean Furniture and Floors

Now that all of your surfaces are cleared off, it’s time to dust. Use a damp cloth or a cloth with some dusting spray if your parents will let you use it. After you finish dusting, you can clean your floors. If you have a carpet, you’ll need to vacuum. If you have wood, tile, or other hard flooring, it’s time to get out the broom and dust mop, though you might have a vacuum for these kinds of floors. It’s important to clean the floors only after you dust. That’s because dusting will put some more dirt on the floor, and if you clean your floors and then dust, you’ll probably have to clean your floors again.

Empty Garbage Cans

You put trash in your bedroom garbage cans while you were putting your toys away. Now, it’s time to empty those garbage cans. Take them and dump their contents into a larger garbage can or garbage bag that will be going out to the curb for pickup. If there is sticky stuff or food in your garbage, you might need to wipe the cans clean with a wet cloth.

Make Your Bed

Now it’s time to make your bed. Place your pillows at the head of the bed. Draw up the sheet and blankets so that they aren’t crumpled up anymore, and smooth them out. Your comforter or quilt should be folded neatly and placed at the foot of the bed. Congratulations: You’re done!

Maintain Your Room

Now that your room is clean, you can keep yourself from having to spend too much time cleaning it in the future by keeping it neat and tidy. Put away your toys as soon as you’re done playing with them. Put your clothes in the hamper when you’re finished wearing them for the day or in the closet or dresser after they’re washed. Do these things every time and you won’t have any clutter to pick up at the end of the week.

• Bedroom Spring Cleaning Checklist
• Clean Your Room: Checklist (PDF)
• Daily and Weekly Bedroom Cleaning Checklist
• Decluttering Kids’ Rooms
• Fun Ways to Get Toddlers to Clean Up
• Is It “Mom Clean”?
• On Your Marks, Get Set, Go: How to Make Tidying Fun
• Secrets to Cleaning With Kids
• Teaching Your Kids to Clean Their Rooms
• Weekly Kids’ Room-Cleaning Routine (PDF)