Look at the date of the last post!  Could it really have been that long?!  Well, that was at the end of my last pregnancy and then came child #4 …. I know, excuses, excuses!  However, I do think that most of my time was spent digging out from under piles of toys and mess from my 5, 6 and 8 year olds that they made when I was tending to other things.  Baby does take up so much of our time and now that my attention is divided 4 ways, I just can’t stand over them every moment.  Plus, let’s face it, they are getting rather crafty in their methods for what they call “cleaning up”.  UGH!

Ok, so let’s talk about how to get some control over this whole process of big kids cleaning up their things.  Great idea, but how come their manual doesn’t even cover the subject?!  Well, we did try many things, each with different levels of success, but I’m going to share the most effective techniques that we ended up keeping.  We use them together to create something that we can live with.

1)  Promises on the Wall
2)  10-10 Clean Up Rounds
3)  Clean Up Music

Promises on the Wall
This was step 1.  It began with a conversation in the form of a family meeting where we discussed the fact that some of us (lol) felt we had a big problem.  We focused on the key things that the kids were doing that caused the biggest headaches.  Some of them were things they all did and each kid had one thing that was their own personal favorite … hehehe.

For example, my son developed this love for dumping out all of his toys from every container into a pile.  Together.  Building blocks, itty bitty legos, games, puzzles.  All in a pile.  Then, he didn’t play with any of it.  Get the picture?

Then my youngest daughter.  Well, she perfected the art of “dash and tuck” — hiding all those little pieces of toys that escaped the clean up activity.  When sent to put them away in the proper toy, she would hide them somewhere – anywhere.  And they weren’t great hiding places either because you’d find them in the next room under a pillow or the edge of a chair – she’d tuck them in the first place that was beyond our line of sight.  We’d find them, call her back, give her the piece and tell her to put it away and she just finds another hiding place.  This could go on and on.  Once I’m freed up to follow the little mouse to make sure she does it properly, I do, but you know how it goes!  Baby needs feeding, changing, burping, etc. or one of a million other things and you just can’t follow them all at the same time!

When they get bigger, they perfect that scatter technique that makes our job even harder.  That’s that thing they do when they all go in different directions and you can’t watch them all at once.  (This would be the completely opposite technique from the one used when you actually suggest that they separate and have some “alone time” so that you can call the doctor without fighting in the background, etc.  Then, they must stick to one another like velcro and push every known button that will make the others whine, cry and carry on.)

Anyway, I’m getting off point.  So we met and discussed the problems we had around the general practice, or lack thereof, of the kids cleaning up after themselves.  Then we had THEM tell US what they heard us say were the things they did that made us crazy, but in their own words.  We tweaked them ever so slightly into statements of things they either would begin doing or stop doing.  Below are some of the promises that we developed WITH our kids.  Feel free to use them as a starting point for developing your own.

1) I promise to play with toys the right way.
2) I promise to not make huge messes.
3) I promise to clean up more often.
4) I promise to clean up as a team.

#1 came from an issue we had where they would (very creatively) use a toy for something it was not intended for, either risking the safety of playmates, damage to the toy or both.  #3 came from our realization that the bigger the mess, the less likely they were to clean because it was too intimidating.  So, we started taking little breaks to clean up anything that they were no longer interested in playing with. (See 10-10 Clean Up Rounds below for more details.)

We wrote these promises on a huge sheet of paper, like 12″x18″.  Then we had the kids “sign” their names at the bottom and we posted it right on the wall close to where they play the most.  We refer to them often and they know what’s on that list without even looking at it now.

10-10 Clean Up Rounds
This is a name that I made up so that we had something unique to call it that the kids would instantly recognize.  The rules are a bit like a game and a challenge, so oddly enough, it works.  The first thing that we noticed was that the kids have a very short attention span and although they can play hard for a really long time, that’s not so for work … hehehe

So, 10-10 Clean Up Rounds work like this.  We time them for 10 minutes.  And they know that they only have to do it for 10 minutes, but they must give us that whole 10.  So, during that 10 minutes, each child grabs 10 things and puts them away.  Big or small, it doesn’t matter.  Then, once they reach 10, they come to the parent and tell them what they cleaned up.  Then we praise them and send them off for another 10.  What ends up happening is that they compete with one another to clean up the most things and they come to us less and less to tell us what they’ve done.  They do the first 10 and then move right on to the next.  At the end they proudly report “I cleaned up 31 things!”.  And again, if it’s 31 of those ridiculously tiny littlest pet shop things, that’s OK — they needed cleaning up and YOU don’t want to do it!  In fact, the bigger numbers gives them a real sense of accomplishment.

Now, you combine this with promise #3 above, and you can develop a little system that YOU control.  If the mess is huge, you call for a 10-10 Clean Up Round more often.  Call for 1 every hour throughout the day and suddenly they will have it under control.  They won’t notice that they actually spent a combined total of 80 minutes cleaning up.  And it will be far more effective than that last hour of the day before dinner when you can’t get them to clean up for 15 minutes, let alone the whole hour that the day’s mess will need.

Clean Up Music
This one is for fun and motivation.  It is also a privilege because sometimes things can get out of hand quickly.  So, the rule is that if they aren’t working, the music gets turned off.  What I did was start with an internet search for kids’ clean up songs.  I found a ton and the kids were already familiar with many from some of the shows they watch.  Some were just instrumental, but were energizing and just make you want to get up and move.  So, we picked a ton and burned a CD.  We play it when it’s time to do chores.  At first it was for during the 10-10 Clean Up Rounds, but as we’ve increased their responsibilities over the last year, we use it for chore time too.  We all end up getting into it and suddenly we’re all dancing around the house, emptying all the trash bins, doing the recyclables, etc.  Again, if the work stops, so does the music, and they don’t like that, so it really provides a great incentive!

Of course, all kids are different (I think I say that in every post) so your results may vary.  But, try these and change them based on your own family.  Hopefully though, this gives you a starting point and will get your own creative ideas flowing to help you tackle this challenge.  We’ve had plenty of failed ideas that we thought were pretty good ones when we dreamed them up, but it’s through those failures that we find the successes!