One of my pet peeves is when my kids leave little tiny toys evenly spaced all over the floor in my house!!! Isn’t it funny how the toys act like the opposite sides of a magnet and repel each other so they can cover a larger area of carpet!? Here are a couple of different ideas that I have found to be keep me from losing my mind:
Here are a few things I mention in this post that will help you get the kids cleaning! (The links in this post are affiliate links)
1. Get your laundry basket and walk around the house. Anything that is not in it’s place, add it to your basket! Now the trick is, once the kids get home from school, they have to separate their stuff from the basket and put it back where it belongs BEFORE they can do anything else! Bribery always works! 😉
2. Have the kids grab a grocery sack and set the timer for one minute. Everyone runs around the house looking for things that are not in their place and adds them to their bag (whether it’s theirs or not). Everyone gets a penny for each thing in their bag once it’s put back in it’s place! My kids love this game!
3. Put on an apron with deep pockets while you are cleaning the house. This way, while you are in a room cleaning, you don’t have to leave the room to put one little thing away and get distracted by the mess in the other room! I don’t know about you, but I can not clean one room at a time! If I go to a different room to put something away, I get stuck there cleaning that mess! This helps me get things done faster. Then when I am done with cleaning, I put away the things in my pockets. With the kids and their aprons, they get a penny for every item they picked up and put in their apron. It has to be an item that didn’t belong in the room they were cleaning in though. They get paid when they have put everything away in their pockets.
4. Make a “tidy up apron” for your kids too! Take a pillow case and follow the directions found here! It’s so simple, all you need is a pillow case and ribbon. Then teach your kids the same technique as discussed in idea #3. They will love cleaning up like mom does! Read #3 to see how I use these aprons with my kids.
5. Use a color game. Tell the kids to look for everything white. Pick it up and put it away, then come and report to me. Then I say look for everything green, pick it up, put it away then come and report to me… works like a charm for little ones, and it helps them learn their colors.
6. Use a sorting game. Tell the kids to pick up everything you can wear on your body. Next, anything you can eat with. Next, anything that you can play with. It’s like a scavenger hunt!
7. Get out the disinfecting wipes. We love the all natural Seventh Generation Disinfecting Wipes for the kids to use to keep them safe. Give each child and assign each child a different room. Have the kids clean one thing in each room. For example: have them clean all the door knobs in their bedroom. Then come and report when that is done. Then have them go back and clean all the light switches. And so on until all the surfaces are done.
Cleaning isn’t always fun, but when you incorporate the whole family and make a game out of it, it makes the process so much more fun!
This blog is great Annette. I love those little pumpkin pies too. They look so easy. Let me know if you make them how they turn out. Keep up the good work. Thanks!