Purpose in the Little Things: Getting Kids to Clean Up

 This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here. 

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Early on in this process of getting more organized, it became clear that if the kids were going to be home all the time, they were going to have to function as part of the "team." I can't do everything! I needed for them to be more helpful and independent. This started primarily as a push to get them to help clean up after themselves.

Getting kids to clean up is hard. You would think picking things up one-by-one would be easy enough to teach, but it has required a lot of training! It's still a challenge to motivate them at times, but through trial and error, we've come up with some things that help.

Here's what has helped us get the job done:

1. Reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Seriously. Besides being a hilarious and enjoyable read, it inspired my kids to come up with all kinds of games to make cleaning fun.

 And speaking of games...

2. Playing a game. My son is especially motivated by competition. I did realize early on, however, that having him compete against his sister was a bad idea. Our typical big clean is during dinner prep, so everyone is hungry and tired. This is a recipe for a tantrum, not a successful clean-up. What we've done instead, is have them compete against me. A typical day has me speaking in a bad cockney accent, pretending to be the "evil kitchen wench," and shouting things like, "I bet they'll forget to clean under the table!" We earn points each task we complete. Whoever has the most, wins. (Note: They always win. Which really means I do).

3. Having a snack. Nothing will derail clean up like a hungry, grumpy kid. Having fed them also allows me to shut down the "I can't work because I'm hungry" complaint more easily. If at all possible, we give them a snack beforehand.

4. Cranking the tunes. We've tried listening to audiobooks or Odyssey, but it usually finds them wandering aimlessly about the room while they listen. Turn on something really upbeat, though, and they get moving (and have a blast!). If you can work out to it, you can clean up to it. Our most recent jam has been the Rio soundtrack, but we have several playlists we use.

5. Having less stuff out. The more toys there are, the bigger and more mixed up the mess gets. We tried the bin for everything method, and it was still a major struggle. It has helped us so much to rotate through the toys. Since I'm not a rockstar mom with lots of time to rotate toys, I use those little bags for washing delicates to zip up a few toys (maybe one puzzle and a few other odds and ends). We keep them up high, and allow them to have one or two out at a time.

6. Making the task as defined as possible. I made these little charts for their bedroom, the living room, and the basement. It splits the mess up into categories, which allows me to make assignments. There's a different colored column for each child, and I slide a bead into the appropriate column to assign that task. For instance, this means Tim needs to pick up the blocks and our books, while Ava picks up the toys and the cleans the craft table. This chart helps them break the task of cleaning the living room down into smaller pieces and it helps me keep each child accountable for helping.

 7. Making a pile. Many times after they finish the checklist, there are still a lot of things lying around. At this point, it is hard for them to see the mess, so often we will make a pile. Since we have hardwood floors, I most often take a broom and push everything that's left together. It keeps me from having to stoop every five seconds and is so much faster. After that's done, I will often sit with them and help them sort all the randomness, sending them to put things where they go. This is often our final push, and where they need a bit more grace. They are still kids. They are learning. As such, they usually need a little more guidance and coaching to finish well.

My seven-year-old is now very helpful with clean up, my five-year-old can be helpful (when he wants to be), and my three-year-old can handle a few smaller tasks. It can still be a major struggle (you know those days), but most nights, the living room is fairly tidy when they go to bed. Except when it isn't.

Keepin' it real, y'all. :)

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If you'd like a copy of the cleaning checklist, I'm making them available below. Obviously, these are very specific for where things are in my house, but as always, I'm giving you the excel file. Hopefully, you can mix and match enough of the clip art to make it usable for you. :)

Downstairs Checklist
Bedroom Checklist
Basement Checklist

I made these a lot like my morning checklist. If you have them laminated at an office supply store, it might take a bit of work to get them threaded. A thicker needle and a thimble will probably help!

Purpose in the Little Things: Chores!

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here. 

I have always struggled to keep a clean house with kids. It was just hard to find the time to clean when they were all so little. But this magical thing just happened:

My kids got a little older.

It happened when I wasn't looking. I was probably fussing with a toddler. Somehow I missed what the bigger ones could do.

It was around the first of the year that I decided to try to get more of a handle on the house. I knew that the kids were going to have to be a part of that.

There are many of ways to do chores. I decided that we would do our cleaning schedule together.

Since their chores change a bit from day to day depending on what we are working on, I decided to make a chore chart so that it was very clear what each child needs to do. Like my daily routine chart, I used small laminated tiles with Velcro coins on them so that I could easily switch them out. This could probably also work with a small pocket chart.

Daily Chores 
There are a few things the kids help me with every day. Here's how I break down the daily chores, with some notes. Tasks that I give the kids (meaning my 5 and 7 year olds) are in italics.

• One load of laundry: I can't have a laundry day. Just. can't. I can't get down the the basement enough, and if too many loads of laundry go through in a day, it never ever gets folded. So I run one to two loads a day, and try to fold it in the evening while Daniel and I relax and watch something. I have a small laundry basket for each child, and I put all of their clothes in there. The older two put away their own clothes when they do their morning checklist, and my three year old helps me put hers away (meaning I sit with her and show her where everything goes).
• Dishes: This includes a general kitchen tidy and loading of the dishwasher. The kids are required to clear their own dishes after meals.
• Emptying the dishwasher: Someone else unloading the dishwasher is my love language.  
• Clearing and Setting the Table: The older two kids switch off doing this and emptying the dishwasher.  
• Downstairs Checklist: Have I mentioned that I like checklists? I made a checklist for cleaning the our main living areas, the bedrooms, and the basement. It basically breaks down the rooms into smaller jobs and allows me to assign tasks to different kids. (You can get a copy of the checklists I use here).

Weekly Chores
In addition to the daily chores, we spend 20-30 minutes working together on tasks that are completed weekly. This could be cleaning the bathrooms, dusting, cleaning the floors, or tidying the bedrooms, the basement, or the van.

I made a larger task card to go at the top of the chart that indicates where we are working, then I put the tasks I want each child to complete in their individual sections. When those tasks are done, I move them to the done side of the chart.

Here’s how we break down the weekly chores. Again, the kids’ jobs are in italics:

Bedrooms: 

• Bedroom Checklist: Again, this basically splits the cleaning up into very defined tasks.

Bathrooms: 

• Clean Toilet
• Clean Bathtub/Shower: I love the Dawn/vinegar thing!
• Sweep/Swiffer Floors
• Mop Floor
• Clean Mirrors 
• Wipe Sink--We use a vinegar/water/dish soap solution that is pretty family friendly.
• Empty Trash

Floors:  

• Wipe table: You might wonder why this is on the floor list. It's because I like to work top down in the kitchen. I always clean off the eating and cooking surfaces before I clean the floor. I hate to do a thorough cleaning of the floors and have crumbs immediately getting knocked onto the floor. Gotta wait at least five minutes. ;)
• Sweep kitchen floor: The kids sometimes help, especially with the dust pan (ours has a little brush, which makes it easier for them).
• Scrub kitchen floor: We have laminate floors in the kitchen, and they hate water, so I can't mop. We have to scrub on hands and knees and dry with a towel.  I did, however, just discover that our kids love this job. Because water and soap and sloshing. So last time we did it together, and it was fun. And wet.
• Swiffer under couches: My kids love to swiffer. Like, they would love to come swiffer your house.

Dusting:  

• Dust bookshelves: My kids love the Swiffer 360 duster and actually fight over who gets to dust. So that's a win.
• Dust furniture 
• Dust blinds

Laundry: 

• One load a day
• Put clothes away

Van 

• Clean out van: The kids help with this. Or just pretend to drive while I do it. :)
• Vacuum

Basement:

• Cleaning the litter box
• Basement Checklist: This is basically our playroom/family room, so there are a lot of toys. Just like the living areas and their bedrooms, I have a checklist that splits the cleaning of the basement into defined tasks.

Rewards
We decided early on not to tie the kids’ chores to allowances. There might be jobs in the future that we pay the kids to complete, but for now, we want them to know that being part of our family means being part of the team. That much is, and will always be, expected. We did, however, want to reward them for their participation, so I created a small sticker chart. Each day the kids complete their chores, I put a sticker on a small sticker chart I made. If they don’t cooperate, they lose that day’s sticker (but can do extra chores to make up for it). When they receive seven stickers, we go out for ice cream (or frozen yogurt). If they save up two weeks worth of stickers, they can get a book at Half-Price books. I like this system, both because it’s motivating and because it’s been my goal to have less sugar in the house. It allows us to enjoy a family date together at the end of the week, without having sugar be so much a part of our every day.

Extra Chores:
There are sometimes chores that we don’t get to, so I often put those aside as extra chores. Dusting, for example, often ends up being an extra chore. There are other chores too that are not as much a part of the daily functioning of the house, like helping to put away groceries, cleaning out the refrigerator, shoveling snow (believe it or not, my son loves this), and picking up sticks before Daniel mows the yard. I put a few extra Velcro buttons on the bottom of the chart, and I will often put extra chores there that the kids can choose to do for extra stickers. I also sometimes reward the kids with a sticker when I see them doing something helpful, like yesterday, when Tim emptied the recycle bin on his own initiative. It’s helpful for me to have them looking for extra ways that they can help.

We usually do ice cream trips on Saturday, so it usually works out that the kids need to do one or two extra tasks during the week to get the reward. We aren’t really that rigid about it. Mostly we go if the kids have generally done all the things that we’ve asked of them without too much complaint, and most of the time they have.

Learning to be Servants 
It’s amazing to me how helpful it’s been to have the kids doing these small jobs. I had hoped that I would be able to do some chores of my own during their chore time, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way. I generally supervise and help them with what they are doing, and corral the little ones who are not as able to help. I think about this as training, and it’s still helpful. For those 20 or 30 minutes, they are moving in the same direction as me (and not tearing things apart while I'm trying to put them together). They are also gaining valuable skills for when they are on their own and learning to be servants of the people they love.

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If you'd like a (editable) copy of this chore chart, the chore cards, or the reward chart, feel free to click the links below!

Chore Chart
Chore Cards
Reward Sticker Chart 

Purpose in the Little Things: Cleaning Checklist

This post is part of a series of posts I'm doing about our journey in home management and homeschooling. You can find the first post and links to the rest of the posts here. 

  Have you seen this e-card?

This is true. My friend texted me other day to tell me she had just gotten down on hands and knees to scrub the kitchen floor. And then her kids spilled half a gallon of apple juice. Isn't that always the way?

Even so, we all know that the housework needs to be done. Even if it's very quickly undone. Even if it's repetitive and never-ending.

We sometimes complain about this, but author Rachel Jankovic points out that we might complain less if we thought about this repetitive work the way that a pianist thinks of practicing or a marathoner thinks of training. It's necessary, and it makes us better.

In the past year, I've come to appreciate that housework is so repetitive, because it has allowed me to create predictable processes for getting it done.

Right now, I do not have a day that I can devote entirely to cleaning. I can't do that when all the kids are here. They just aren't able to hang with it yet. So right now, I have a cleaning schedule.

I use the term schedule loosely (like I always do). There are days that we typically devote to cleaning certain places in the house (Mondays we clean the bathrooms, Wednesday, the bedrooms, Friday, the basement). Sometimes our schedule shifts slightly, and I shuffle things around. And sometimes it's just me looking at what needs to be done most.

I made a little checklist of all the things that need to be done in the week. It looks like this:

There are things that we do daily (like emptying the dishwasher) and things that get done weekly (like cleaning the bathtub). When Daniel saw it, he joked that he needed to pay me more.

There are several big categories that the cleaning tasks fall into: bathrooms, bedrooms, floors, the basement, dusting, and the van. I will typically pick one of these categories to work on each day, assigning some of the tasks to the kids. I highlight those tasks so that I remember what I'm trying to accomplish that day.

Ideally, we would get all of these things done in a week. Most weeks we don't, and that's ok. We still get way more done than we used to.

I find that having this list helps me in a few ways:

First, I'm less likely to look at the mess and think "AAAAHHH!" (Direct quote). This list helps me find a starting point, and break the things that need to be done into manageable chunks.

Second, things don't get as out-of-hand when I am dealing with them on a fairly regular basis. It's far less overwhelming to think about cleaning the shower and takes much less elbow grease to accomplish it if it's only a week's worth of gunk.

Third, I know what I need to be working on in the small chunks of time I have. I don't have hours of free time in a day, but I might have 15 minutes here and there. I'm far less likely to waste those pockets of time I have some direction.

Our house is very rarely completely clean; it sees a lot of use and time is still in short supply. But things get done on a more regular basis and we are never as far from completely clean as we once were. Having a cleaning routine has helped me immensely, because I think the hardest part for me is just knowing where to start. So even though the crumbs are falling to the floor as I sweep them up, most of the time they do actually get swept up. I guess brushing your teeth while eating oreos is better than not brushing at all.

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If you'd like a copy of this checklist, you can find it here:

Weekly To-Do