Cleaning your house is tricky enough, but to have your kids get in on it is another story.
Messes and children are a pairing that’s more common in the household than you think.
But with a bit of creativity, you can get your kids to sort the mess out themselves.
Here are some tactics you can use to get kids to clean the house with you:
Provide motivation
Your kids can’t exactly clean the house on their own on a whim. Offering up some incentive can definitely help you with this problem.
Now, you shouldn’t be rewarding your children 24/7 for doing something menial like picking up small pieces of trash.
In fact, there’s no need to go overboard with your rewards at all. Let their incentives be something simple yet rewarding such as a movie night for washing their plates after dinner or baking their favorite cookies for putting away their cluttered toys on the floor.
Assign age-appropriate chores
At the end of the day, your children are still kids, and not all chores in your house will suit them. As much as it would be convenient if your kids could check off some cleaning tasks on your list, oftentimes, you might want to assign them chores only they can do. This includes activities such as making their beds or putting away dirty clothing in a specified laundry basket. Kids can learn and adapt surprisingly fast at their young age, so make the most of it while it lasts.
Give direction
Kids often need some direction. Giving them a vague order of “clean your room” will only wrap around their heads and give them an even more compelling reason not to. As much as possible, try to be there and give instructions to your kids before sending them off with whatever cleaning tasks you have for them, especially if it involves unfamiliar territory.
Set up kid-friendly basket areas
This is pretty handy when asking your kids to pick up their toys lying around on the floor. Baskets aren’t that expensive and can be a one-stop place for your kids to put their toys away. It’s a pretty simple chore for them to do, but it’s an effective way to let your kids learn about the value of cleaning up.
Make it fun
Who says cleaning has to be boring for the young ones? With a little creativity and imagination, you can turn cleaning into a game for your children. For example, try to mix in a little bit of those incentives from earlier and have them clean up their rooms at the fastest time to see who gets their reward first.