Right now there a lot of parents stuck at home with their children. While everyone enjoys the quality time, parents are running out of ideas for keeping their little bundles of joy out of trouble and busy. Keeping a routine is very important especially for those kids who go to school or a daycare. Just because kids are home doesn’t mean the home’s cleanliness needs to suffer. Getting your children involved in cleaning will definitely help you. On the other hand, getting your children involved in the process also shows them how important it is to keep your household healthy & functional.

Put Things Back

“A place for everything, and everything in its place” is one of the biggest cleaning clichés of cleaning. Part of combating the hardships of clean up includes containing the mess in the first place. To keep your kids involved, let’s start with one of the basics. The best way to make this happen is by making a “take one out, and put one away” policy. It’s a pretty simple concept. The idea is that if one of your kids is moving on to another toy, then they shouldn’t just abandon the old toy in the middle of the floor. You know, it’s like you do with your tools or kitchen utensils.

Get Specific

One of the things that will surely stand in the way of your cleaning is just telling your kid to clean up. For younger kids this is like freezing a deer in your headlights. They don’t quite understand the process of cleaning up. In some situations, you’ll need to be a little more specific. Here are some ways to make your intentions much clearer:

  • Make sure everything has a special place
  • Label bins with pictures for pre-readers
  • Offer a warning that cleanup is about to happen
  • Give a specific timeframe and stick to it
  • Speak clearly and don’t make their task a question
  • Tell them to put away specific objects one at a time, or type of object
  • Explain the consequences or rewards and stick to them

Divide and Conquer

When your children make a full blown mess in your home, it can be quite intimidating. For parent and kid alike, there are ways you can make it much more manageable if you divide and conquer different goals, rooms, or floors of your home. There are a lot of ways you can reduce cleanup to more manageable chunks. You could start by having your kids just pick up all the yellow and red toys, and then so on and so forth. You can start by just picking up the trucks and then cars. If you’re heavily invested in a certain toy fandom, maybe you can just pick up a certain character or animal before moving onto another.

Keep it Fun

You know chores can be made fun. That’s why there are riding lawnmowers with cupholders and a zero-turn radius. But kids don’t realize that cleaning can be fun. Luckily you can help make it fun by adding some of these elements.

Competition

If you’ve got two or more kids, this one is easy. Generally, they’ll be pretty competitive as it is. You just need to be careful to not bring one kid down as the loser. This isn’t much of a concern if you are acting as your child’s competition. You could easily throw the match at the last second.

Music

If it has a beat and you can clean to it, then you can inject some energy into cleaning time, but no need to go with some saccharine kid-centric nonsense. Change it up and see what kind of music your kid is really into. Try a little metal, maybe some bright pop, or how about some disco.

In Conclusion

Getting your children involved in cleaning doesn’t have to be a chore. Remember to be patient and try and get in on the fun too, it might surprise you just how fun cleaning can be.