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
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POSTED IN: Parenting
5 opinions for Creative ways to get your kids to clean up
tabbi
Feb 10, 2008 at 11:00 pm
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.
kadi
Feb 10, 2008 at 11:14 pm
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!
Julie
Feb 11, 2008 at 7:53 am
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. :D
Jackie
Feb 22, 2008 at 12:32 pm
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.
Ashley
Mar 5, 2008 at 8:36 am
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.
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