Tackling this task for Monday in the Weekly Household Planner:
Change kid’s sheets
One thing I love about summer is it allows for more opportunities for kids to learn life skills. They can participate more in household tasks just by the fact that they have more available free time. One task that is a great one to start is having your kids wash their own sheets. They honestly cannot mess this one up too much as long as you take some precautionary steps to walk them through it once or twice. Kids as young as 5 years old can learn this simple task with just a few pointers from mom. Here are some tips:
1. Have your kids strip the beds and bring the sheets down. Determine if your kids’ sheets will be washed separately or together – if you have two twin beds, you can certainly wash those sheets together. You can have one start the washer and the next one can be responsible for placing them in the dryer.
2. Give them simple instructions. Create a small list or chart that shows the steps you need to do in order to complete a wash. Give specific details, loading the sheets, adding “how much” detergent, setting the load and temperature, etc. Walk them through the first round and help them feel comfortable using both the washer and dryer. If things are spelled out for them and you give them something to refer back to, it will make your job much easier.
3. Have each child retrieve their sheets from the dryer or a basket in the laundry room and be responsible for making their bed. If they are really young and need some assistance, for sure help them out. But allow them to begin trying to put fitted sheets on the mattress and tuck in corners of flat sheets. Showing tricks that you have for placing a pillow in a pillow case will be a great thing to show them too. How else will they learn these things?
4. Celebrate with them when they help out with this task. This seemingly simple task will yield great results – a feeling of pride and independence will emerge.
I love helping kids learn to wash their own sheets. There really isn’t anything they can ruin by washing sheets. You don’t have something that might accidentally get dried and shrink or perhaps a wrong color being thrown in with lighter colors and have fading.
If they master this task during the summer, there is no reason they won’t be able to keep doing this one throughout the school year.
Can you help your child conquer this task?
