AD | Collaborative post
Maintaining a shared household is not one person’s responsibility when living with your family. Everyone, whether a parent or an older child, has a part to play.
Of course, not all members of your family unit may think this way from the outset. Unfortunately, teens can have little regard for property and fail to understand the importance of carefully maintaining every aspect. Some full-grown adults can cause more problems than they solve, too, as teens carry these attitudes into later life.
Still, you might be able to turn things around and help your kids understand what’s at stake. Here are some ways you might be able to teach them about home maintenance.
Show Them the Bill
Kids often want lots of luxuries. The price tags they are used to seeing in their smaller lives may not be too hefty compared to the bills that can be incurred with extensive maintenance.
The next time your property has much work done, show your kids the bill. Few sights are as shocking and sobering as larger expenses. Your children may soon understand the gravity of maintenance and its importance in their lives upon seeing the financial figures. It can also teach them how you’ve prioritised costs in your life, spending more money on things like repairs rather than trivial luxuries.
Your kids may treat parts of your home more respectfully if they know they are more costly to maintain. While maintenance is important and often routine, they should understand that it shouldn’t be undertaken needlessly. In the end, the associated costs have the potential to change their attitude, especially when they think ten pounds worth of pocket money is a lot!
Teach Them the Value of Help
Home maintenance can seem like a huge responsibility. Kids with low self-esteem may shy away from it simply because they think it’s too much work.
However, reinforcing the idea that help is out there can encourage them. After all, even cleaners can visit a property occasionally if homeowners are short on time to do things themselves. Whether it’s simple tasks or special needs, support is always available, and your kids should be comforted by that idea.
Of course, specialist help is sometimes mandatory too. If there’s a leak in the home space, then a fast response from services like Miracle Leak Detection is needed. They provide reliable and friendly support and utilise the latest technologies to fix leaks fast. Free quotes and inspections are provided, and though they operate throughout the UK, they often visit areas like Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey, and London. If they stop by to help you, encourage your kids to watch these interactions so they can learn how to deal with tradespeople, pipe leak repair, and more.
These specialists also teach their website visitors about signs of water leaks. Therefore, it may be worth recommending their online literature to your teens for a quick and convenient read. That way, they don’t have to endure endless (though hopefully well-meaning) lectures from one person. They’ll be glad to have services like these on standby when they have their own place, too.
Use Their Creativity
Some home maintenance tasks can be somewhat dry and routine. That said, other parts can tap into people’s creative talents. Few imaginations can rival that of a child!
Repairing and repurposing certain items can be immensely fun for sprogs. Adding new fabric to furniture, picking out new materials for walls and flooring, and even just repainting worn-out rooms can also be a richly rewarding process for them. Maintenance can be an opportunity to reinforce the identity and character of a home.
Moreover, your kids may often disprove their home’s décor. By giving them a bit of agency to add their stylish touches here and there, they can appreciate the full potential of maintenance and how it can help to define their home’s attributes better. It can speak their language rather than disrupt their lifestyle.
Though some maintenance tasks can be expensive, others can be more affordable and thus experimental. Try to teach your kids that not every task in this arena is enormously time sensitive and have fun with the process of mixing and matching materials and sampling new things.
Share the Schedule
Many parents brand their children as difficult or lazy. However, their refusal to do certain tasks may be caused by low self-esteem more than apathy. By keeping them busy, your kids may soon become more self-sufficient, enjoy being active, and feel proud of the difference they’ve made.
Involve your kids in these recurring tasks. For example, you could ask them to:
- Check smoke alarms and detectors.
- Change batteries and lightbulbs (the latter with careful instruction and supervision).
- Scrub condensation and mould away from windows and walls.
- Water indoor plants.
- Dust shelving units and hoover carpets.
Not every home maintenance task is a seismic, one-off event. Routine property care falls under the definition too, and everyone needs to understand what you’re doing and why. While these tasks may not be fun, they can be empowering.