Five tips for keeping an ADHD child's bedroom clean and tidy!

The dreaded "Get your room clean" is Nicole's worst phrase, and in this house it happens a lot.

Today she must have her room clean after school or no electronics for the evening. 


My husband has OCD, for cleaning, if you understand Obsessive Compulsion Disorder, you get that my husband has a hard time just leaving a messy room alone. Nicole can't just shut her door and it magically doesn't bother my husband. Knowing ADHD people have a hard time staying on task, and OCD people can not just "ignore" something that bothers them you can image dealing with the two of them. She gets frustrated and angry and the tears come. He gets frustrated and gets angry. More tears come. And I'm stuck in the middle. 


More than once I have just cleaned her room so that everyone can stay happy and comfortable. But I know that doesn't help her learn how to get simple jobs done.


If you struggle with your child to keep his or her messy room neat, tidy and organized read on for some helpful tips.


1- Take LOTS of breaks. Putting things into smaller task, for example, put away the small toys and then you can take a break (usually play on minecraft) for 15 minutes then we will tackle something else.

2- Do it before doing something really fun. Nicole knows that if she wants friends to come over she must have her room clean before hand. This reinforces the reward system as well, you can't do one thing with out first doing this.

3-Keep them on task. Stay in the room to keep reminding them what they are doing. Nicole has to be reminded constantly of what she is doing, or she gets distracted. She makes slime and this is the hardest one to deal with. She must play with each one before she puts it away. That makes putting away the slime a longer task. I'm constantly reminding her that she has to put them away and move onto something else. 

4- Set a time limit. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. If she is having a bad day she will feel over whelmed, and get frustrated quickly. But if there is a big reward at the end then it isn't too bad. This only works if her room is only untidy and not like a tornado went through it! ( Which happens more often than you would think...and very quickly at that)

5 Encourage and PRAISE. This is one of my favorites. In this day and age I think we all forget how good it feels to have a pat on the back for a job well done. Instead of negative remarks and yelling, praise for what was accomplished. A simple "Look at how far you have come so far, only a bit farther and you will be done." We all get frustrated but trying to stay calm and chill will go along way. It helps them stay calm and get the job done.

These five tips have saved my sanity on more than one occasion.

Hopefully these tips help you, even if your child isn't hyper, but just does not like to clean there room (I have one that loves it).

Comment below if you have additional tips to get that disaster they call a bedroom back to sparkling.