What room in your house do you most fear? Where dust bunnies have established a permanent residence and crumbs live undisturbed for years: where closets resemble a Salvation Army collection box and smells laugh at straight Lysol. You guessed it-your kid's room. Kids' rooms do present a special challenge because kids use a house more and harder than the rest of us. If you have children, at some point in life they will be your number one time-taker, concern, and expense. If this is where you are now, read this closely; it could do a lot to simplify your life. Let's start with the walls. you want to make sure every surface you put in your child's room is tough and scrubbable, especially the walls. If a kid gets jam on his hands, washing them isn't exactly the first thing on his mind. Paint the walls with a good semi-gloss enamel. Medium-tone paints such as tan, gray, or beige will hide smudges the best. One entire wall could be just a chalkboard. That way the kids have fun, and you will never have to wipe another handprint. Flooring: The best floor for a kid's room is a hard surface sheet vinyl or vinyl tile. A carpet may never recover from all the painting, glueing, and other child-craft casualties. Vinyl flooring is durable and scrubbable. You can sweep the toys off the floor and it resists spills and stains. A strong pattern will help to hide finger paint, cherry Kool-Aid, gerbil tracks and many other wooly activities in a child's life. Furniture: Children to not appreciate the cost of good furniture, If you make it bright, attractive, and scaled to their size, they might actually use it. Soft modular fold-out furniture works great. They can't get hurt on it and they can rearrange the pieces. Buy a bed with built in drawers. It eliminates a place for the kids to shove old pizza, it saves the cost of a box springs and frame, it saves cleaning under the bed and because the dresser has been eliminated you will have more play room. Closets: make sure the rods can be adjusted to the kids' height. Put a tilted wire basket on the floor of the closet for shoes. The dirt will fall on the floor to be vacuumed up and the shoes will stay in order. Safety issues: No tablecloths, free standing lamps,vases or figurines. No sharp corners. No furniture that encourages climbing. no throw rugs, The first two years of a child's life are spent learning to walk-falling, bumping and grabbing at everything in his or her path. Besides checking for sharp edges, be sure that furniture isn't loose or unstable-that it can't be pulled over. No house plants or you will have a mess-and maybe a poisoned child. For further advice on making children's rooms easy to clean: check out my book "Teaching Children to Clean" available on Amazon.