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10 Positive things to do from home

We’ve put together a few ideas to keep your spirits up when you’re at home during the current virus outbreak:  

1. Plan or Re-decorate

Plan something for the future- create a mood board to re-decorate your home or research a trip for later in the year.

2. Get Cooking

Cook something delicious – there are some great apps out there to help you use what you have, rather than heading to the shops. Plus, subscription companies like Gousto and Hello Fresh are still delivering fresh food to your door.

3. Clean Your Home

Spring Clean – Whether it’s the whole house or the utensils drawer – being clutter-free and organised is a great feeling.

4. Phone or Video Chat

Call or video chat with someone who you haven’t spoken to in a while, maybe your uncle and/or auntie, or maybe an old friend.

5. Sort Out Your Finances

Get your finances in order – save money by switching utility providers or shopping around for a better credit card rate.

6. Have a Sort Out

Clear out your wardrobe– separate clothes into a throw-out pile, a charity pile and a keep pile.

7. Research Your Family Tree

Research your family tree – most ancestry websites offer free trials too.

8. Keep On Exercising

Exercise – join a yoga streaming group or dust off that exercise bike lurking in the shed. Joe Wicks, The Body Coach is doing daily videos for children and adults during the week – https://www.youtube.com/user/thebodycoach1.


9. Get a Book Out

Read – or if you prefer, listen to an audio book.

10. Learn a New Skill

Access to webinars/online resources is greater than ever. From languages courses to DIY, there’s something for everyone.

These are just a few ideas to keep yourself positive during the current situation, what ideas can you think of? Let us know what you’ll be doing.

Fun Cleaning Games For Kids

Entertaining kids in the evenings and weekends is a difficult task, but have you thought about making cleaning fun for the kids?

We’ve put our heads together and come up with a list of fun cleaning games that your kids will enjoy!

fun cleaning kids

 

Fill Up Fun

Fill Up Fun is all about recycling, although the first part of this game may be boring for the kids so you might want to do this!

  • Wash and dry the plastic and other recyclable items ready for recycling (Do this beforehand for the kids)
  • Split all the recycling into two equal piles
  • Place the recycling bin a short distance away from the piles
  • See who can get their recycling into the bin quick enough
  • Alternatively, see who can throw the plastic items into the bin from the greatest distance

This would be fun for adults, let alone the kids! Haha!

Spot The Recycling

Another bit of recycling fun for the kids is to firstly give them two bin bags each; one for recycling and the other for general waste.

Get your children to walk around the house and put in their bags what rubbish they think should be recycled and what should be thrown into general waste.

This can help with a bit of family exercise as well, especially if you do a timed race and see who has the most amount of items in the correct bags in the allotted time period.

Fold It Fast

This one is quite an easy one, but yet fun for the kids, as it doesn’t involve much setting up.

You will need:

  • A pile of clean, dry washing
  • Two or more enthusiastic children
  • A parent to supervise

All this game involves is for you to show the kids how to fold the laundry and then time them to see who can fold the most amount of items in the chosen time.

Kids Clear Out

A good clear out of old items needs to be done completed on a regular basis, especially with growing kids in the house.

As kids grow up they go off certain toys, books or games etc, and also as adults, we love to keep things we don’t need!

  • Go through the whole house putting items in three piles
    – Keep Pile
    – Charity Pile
    – Throw Pile
  • Get your kids to go through their old items and get rid of anything they don’t want anymore (if it’s broken throw it and if it’s still intact give it to charity)
  • While they’re doing this, you can go through some of your own things that you may not want to clutter the house with
  • Once all of the items have been put into piles, check to see if the kids have put things in the correct piles
  • Let your children bag the items and anything going to the local charity store, take them with you so they can hand over the bag

We’re sure there are plenty more cleaning games that can get kids liking cleaning, so if you know of any, let us know by sharing this post on social with your game idea!

If you’ve exhausted yourself and your kids playing all these games, then give your local Merry Maids a call to help with the housework so you can live life’s moments.

5 Tips On Keeping Your House Clean With Kids

5 Tips on keeping your house clean with kids

Most parents sit down after a long day and remember how easy it was keeping your house clean before you had those precious little pains in the backside. However much you love your kids, cleaning up after them really is a chore in itself!

Child Playing

There are a few quick little tips that you can teach your kids to do that will really cut down the workload of picking up all of their toys yourself. Now I’ve got your attention! Here goes:

Make a daily chore checklist

This is one for you all to take away and implement straight away. You may not think so, but children like structure just as much as us adults do and implementing a daily chore checklist can really help.

Implementing a daily store checklist needs to have quick and easy jobs at the start and then more jobs can be added once your child gets older and used to the current chores.

For example:

Chores for young kids:

  • Put toys back in the toybox
  • Place dirty clothes in the washing basket
  • Get shoes on the shoe rack

Chores for older kids:

  • Make bed
  • Set the table for dinner
  • Get lunchbox and homework out of school bag

These small chores will make your lives that little bit easier and give you more time for a snuggle with your little one, and of course, that bit of time to yourself when the kids have been put to bed.

Reward your kids

One of the best ways for your children to get used the idea of doing their daily chores is to implement some kind of reward scheme.

For example:

Rewards for young kids:

  • A sticker chart with stars or smiley faces
  • Make them promises to take them to the park (always keep those promises)

Rewards for older kids:

  • Give them 15 minutes of time on their technology
  • Play with them in the garden for half an hour

The best reward for the older kids in the world we live in today is to change the password for the Wi-Fi every day, once their chores have been completed, give them the password to have a small amount of time on the internet.

Make cleaning fun

Yes, cleaning can be fun! Here are a quick few ways of making cleaning fun for your children:

For the younger children:

  • Put on a song like the Tidy Up Rhumba which your kids really will love and dance along to while cleaning!
  • If you have more than one child, let them compete to see who can tidy up first!
  • Let them organise their toys by colour or type

For the older children:

  • Put on their favourite songs, like a Little Mix track or something along those lines. (The Tidy Up Rhumba does work on older kids sometimes as well)!
  • Let the older ones compete as well, it may be a bit more competitive, but it will eventually get done!

Don’t let chores be a punishment

If you tell your child to do a chore as a punishment, this will turn a chore into a negative and not a positive. Instead of making them do a chore, put them on the naughty step and then encourage them to do their chores after you have let them play for a bit and take their mind off being naughty.

Make it a habit

Make sure your children get used to doing your selected chores every single day to ensure they stick in their minds. They will eventually do this on their own, without you having to tell them and also not expect a reward every time as well.

 

After all of this you don’t have time to keep the other parts of your house clean, then give your local Merry Maids a call. Find your local Merry Maids here.

If you have a quick 2 minutes – One of our franchises, Kingston Merry Maids has just celebrated receiving an award for their staff, read the full story here.