Study Shows that Your Mess at Home Affects Your Kids!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (or your mother!), once again, we have found compelling inspiration to clean up your apartment! Yes, not only can a messy apartment  lead to obesity, but you are ruining your children’s chances of getting into a good college and having a meaningful life.

Yep, if looking at the pile of dirty laundry and that towering stack of mail was not enough to get you motivated, we’ll add a heaping spoonful of …GUILT!

Messes and Reading; It’s All the Mother’s Fault!

Got kids? Well, then if you have kids and your home is on the disorganized side, then it’s your fault that “See Spot Run” is giving them a hard time!

No longer is it enough to limit TV time, read to your kids and worship the library as a sacred venue, now you must clean and organize. Not because you want the approval of your picky mother in law or aspire to be June Cleaver, but because you want your children to read and go to college.

And yes, we have the scientific study to prove it:

Order in the House! Associations among Household Chaos, the Home Literacy Environment, Maternal Reading Ability, and Children’s Early Reading

Author’s Anna D. Johnson and Anne Martin of Columbia’s Teachers College, along with a couple of co-authors, looked at the effect of household order on kids’ reading skills.

Results suggest that the degree of household order is significantly and positively associated with the expressive vocabulary, Woodcock Reading Mastery, and phonological awareness skills of children whose mothers are above-average readers.

In plain language for the rest of us:  The cleaner and neater your house is, the better your kids’ language skills will be.

For a more detailed look at the study, check out the article, Messy House, Messy Minds By Emily Bazelon. Then once inspired, get yourself a closet storage solution to help you get that mess in order and be a better mom!