Finding fun ways to get kids to clean up
February 10, 2008 by Sherry Osborne
Filed under Parenting
My oldest daughter’s room is a nightmare. Some days I am sorely tempted to throw out everything but the bed and three articles of clothing.
My youngest daughter has often enjoyed cleaning up, but her sister’s example has been leading her away from that and now she’s becoming a little more fond of tossing her toys across the room and then just leaving them there.
I do try to enforce the rule of “put it away before you take something else out” but sometimes it doesn’t work out, either because whatever they’re playing with has eight billion pieces anyway or else I’m not in the same room – if they’re in one of the bedrooms and I’m in the kitchen cooking supper, I can’t see what they’re pulling out, and believe me, kids can make a mess faster than anyone can clean up.
Sometimes the only thing you can do is try to clean up the carnage after it’s all over, and that’s where your energetic kids might suddenly start sighing about how incredibly tiiiiiiiired they are. At that point, getting them to clean up is an exercise in frustration.
Over at <a href=”http://www.declutterit.com/the-clean-up-game”>De-clutter It!</a> there’s a great post about one way to encourage kids to clean up by making it fun. Julie suggests using a kitchen timer. Set it for five minutes (longer than five minutes would probably be too long for a child’s attention span, especially if it’s something they don’t necessarily enjoy) and then challenge them to see if they can pick up all their toys and stash them away (specify that they need to go where they belong, otherwise you may have a big surprise under the bed or in the closet) before the timer goes off. Kids love games and challenges, so making clean-up a race instead of a chore will be more interesting and definitely more productive than standing in the middle of the room hollering at everyone to just bloody-well clean up their crap already. Not that I’ve ever done that. Uhhh. Nope, not me. Ahem.
I know that it works for me. Sometime sI’m not motivated to do housework but if I find out someone’s on their way over to drop by and I have 15 minutes, I end up racing the clock to get the dishes washed, toys picked up, bathroom counter wiped down, etc. before the guest arrives. It’s a little exhilerating, so if it can work for an adult, it can work for our kids too!
Let me know how it works! I have to do the same thing with my daughter’s room. She did not inherit my organizing gene.
if you want kids to clean up more than have them play on of their favorite games, and if they cant decide on what to play, then u decide. Then tell them that theres a catch to the game and to play and/or win you have to clean up your spots. Then assign them different spots in the house. Next, tell them that the first one done will also get to decide what they play next. It will get them going and get them to have fun while cleaning. You have to remember that kids ant something to look forward to!
or you can play this really cool game i found for cleaning up. you get a deck of cards and asighn each spaid to be a umm…. area. for instence spade = closet hearts = floor and so on and so forth. so you shuffle the deck and then pick a card off the top and lets pretend that u got a 6 of hearts. then you would clean up the floor for 6 minutes. and if u get a face card then u just tidy up for 30 minutes. isnt that a good idea?