Creative ways to get your kids to clean up
Not everyone can go to great lengths like I did with a flooded basement that encourages everyone in the house to pick up, clean up and get organized, so when you can’t count on Mother Nature, who can you count on?
Father Time perhaps?
Julie at Declutter It inspired Sherry at Inside Motherhood to write about this very topic and I have to admit, nothing gets me more motivated to clean up than the challenge of time and well, perhaps the M-I-L saying she’s on her way over.
If the concept works for me, it’s gotta work for others too! Why not kids?
What are some creative ways you get your kids to clean up?
Tags: family, parenting, cleaning, chores, kids
making cleaning a game is always fun. having to pick up certain color/types of toys at a time, making it a race, having “house hold records” is fun. Giving good “rewards” like getting to choose tonight’s dessert/bed time story. Also, giving “medals” is a good idea. Once a child gets so many medals for above and beyond behavior, they get to choose something, movie, toy, outing, etc.
We do the 30 second clean up. The kids run around and frantically try to pick everything up by the time we count backwards from thirty. If they succeed, then we play a fun game or have some popcorn as a treat. They actually like doing it, so most days, we don’t even have to bribe them!
Another thing we do for my ten year old daughter is that she doesn’t get her allowance on Saturdays unless her room is clean. So, she can either do a little maintenance throughout the week to keep it clean or spend most of Saturday morning cleaning it.
She’s learning to clean up as she goes through out the week because a) she wants that allowance and b) what 10 year old wants to spend Saturday cleaning.
Julie,
Sounds like a good idea, but after a while when your daughter starts getting older and you don’t pay her anymore. She will be used to people paying her for just cleaning up a little mess. You should try teaching her responsibility and not give her the money to clean up a little. She wont learn very much getting money for cleaning a little mess that she made. She needs to know that she needs to pick up after herself.
Kadi,
we too do the frantic clean up for short periods of time..it works really well for us if I participate too.. Usually I’ll wait until my oldest asks “Can I watch a movie” or “Can we go out and play” and then I seize the moment and say “okay, but first you know we have to get this mess cleaned up”. Then he’s actually motivated to finish it quickly.
I agree with all these solutionms to getting kids to clean also I would like to add is that “Julie” was saying another idea that she does with her 10 year old daughter which I personally think is fine to do, I know another mother ommented underneither her and said that she should find another way to get her 10 year old kid to cleqan up because getting $ to clean up is not teaching her respodsibilities but really its just the same as what everyone else does with there younge4r kids except they r getting to pick a bed time book or getting some other kind of reward, its the same thing just diffrent concept, and as kids get older u have to fogure out diffrent things, now as ur kids grow into younger aldults u can have the talk with them about “they will not always get a reward or $ for cleaning up there own messes” but u can also explain to them that the reward they r getting now is that they r living like proper human beings or adults by keeping a clean house or bedroom, i know when i clean my house after my kids n family have messed it up or just taken a toll on it threw out the week after i clean it n get to look at the end result that is reward enough for me so i guess all i wanted to comment about is up until a certain age rewards r a great insperation to get ther room or ther play area’s cleaned up, and i think that 10 years old is still young enough to get an allowence for keeping her/his room clean its a good insentive to keeping it tidy threw out the week, and also the little bit of allowence at that age is great and a good way to teach ur kids the meaning of how to manage $ n how to spend it properly!! so “Julie” that was a good tip for me n i will deffinitly keep it in mind as my kids grow up that way i will always have some kind of insperation at n e age to get my kids to clean up what ever area they need to, so thank u very much i thought it was a great idea for sure