How Old Is Too Old To Clean Your Kid's Room?

Fact: My teen’s room gets so messy that sometimes I worry we’ll get a bug infestation. Seriously. We’re talking about a secret stash of candy wrappers that could probably fill the toothpaste-crusted sink in her bathroom; a laundry pile that, although clean, has never been put away and is collecting more dust than the stack of old school supplies rising to the ceiling level on her desk; stuffed animals everywhere; half-eaten granola bars tossed here or there; and cups half-full of Gatorade that I asked her to return to the kitchen at least 15 times. 

I ask her to clean her room. I beg her to clean her room. I threaten the loss of privileges, leave notes reminding her that her room’s a mess, and set a deadline for at least putting the laundry away and tossing out her garbage, so rats don’t start to congregate there.

Most of my pleas go unanswered, and on the one hand, I get it. My daughter is a busy teenager with school and sports commitments. I was young once too, and I know that cleaning your room is low on the list of priorities when friends call for plans. But on the other hand, um, the bugs, and the rats. At some point, the state of her room will affect the whole family. 

And so, after walking past the doorway to her nightmare of a room enough times, I’ll go in, and start to straighten up myself. Therefore I can completely identify with a mom on Tiktok who completely cleaned and organized her teen’s room while she was away on a school trip.

The mom, who creates content using the handle @snowenne_cleans, clearly makes a habit out of keeping her daughter’s room clean because her video is captioned, “So, it’s that time again.” We proceed to see this mom “tackle” the space, picking up trash, removing dirty laundry, and even organizing her daughter’s art supplies.

Next, she goes so far as to repaint the furniture, and clean stains off the carpet. A second video chronicles the mom folding clothes into her daughter’s dresser drawers, and fastidious vacuuming the rug. Finally, we see the “after” from her efforts, and let’s just say this is one lucky kid to come home to such a clean, organized space. 

Comments to the video grew heated almost immediately, with people blasting the creator for allowing her child’s room to get that messy in the first place. Taking deep breaths over here. Because in my experience, it doesn’t take very long for a teen’s room to look like a health hazard.

Thankfully, some commenters were nodding along, saying their kids struggle to maintain clean rooms as well, and noting that like my daughter, teens can have so much going on, they don’t have time to stay on top of their hellhole, er, rooms.

The creator hopped into the comments to laugh off suggestions that threats of not leaving the house might work to encourage her daughter to clean her own room. “Good luck,” she scoffed. 

Yet more commenters said they hated when their parents cleaned their rooms, with one person claiming teens “have a right for private space.” As close to 15,000 passionate comments poured in, the mom simply said she couldn’t understand why cleaning a child’s room “made the world so mad.”

Over on the follow-up video, more than 1,600 additional comments challenged the mom’s efforts. Upon being asked repeatedly how old her daughter is that she is still cleaning her room, the creator simply noted, “I will always be there for my kids no matter the age.”

Now, when I clean my teen's room, I do it without the care and concern for her belongings that she might have, but hey, I gave her plenty of opportunities to clean up her own stuff. Sometime later I’ll have hung up legions of sweaters and jackets in her closet, tossed out food wrappers and sheets of crumpled-up notebook paper that didn’t seem particularly important, and perhaps run a vacuum over her rug. The bed gets made, the stuffed animals are arranged on the sofa, and the room resembles a space that someone would actually want to be instead of a “before” image from Hoarders.

Do I feel slightly guilty for caving and cleaning up instead of standing firm and teaching my daughter a lesson? Not really, because cleaning her room probably gives me more satisfaction than it gives her, and one day she’ll have her own house to worry about. Still, I could see where the critics were coming from when they roasted the TikTok mom.

I’m just glad this mom didn’t take the judgment to heart because some folks definitely took her to task about her decision to clean for her daughter. Indeed, it seems pretty clear this approach wouldn’t work for all families.

But as someone who will cave and clean up my kid’s room, I feel that ultimately, everyone wins when I get up in that space and dig my daughter out of the hole she’s created. Because afterward, when I ask her to tidy up, she’s not as overwhelmed. I also have the upper hand, since I cleaned last time. And, I’m not as stressed when I walk past that door—until of course the junk and clutter accumulate once again, which as the mom on TikTok also joked, doesn’t take but a few hours!