How to Make House Cleaning Fun for Your Kids

There are lots of ways to encourage your children to have good clean-up behavior, and the best way is to inject some fun into the process.  Remember:  grown-ups, by and large, don’t think much of house cleaning either, but when you make it a community project you can all talk, laugh, and make progress together. Here are some tricks of the family house-cleaning trade:

Reading: Rather like a game of “red light, green light,” the clean-up starts when you start reading. When the kids stop to listen to the story, the reading stops too. The only way to get the story started again is to clean up. This is a great activity to add to the beginning of the bed time routine. It gets them quietly moving and listening while getting ready for bed with greater focus.

Playing Pretend: A good game of make believe can transform any bit of drudgery into something a bit more fun.  For example, pretending you’re in a soap commercial while rinsing dishes can make the time full of bubbles and giggles vs. groans! Or, turn that laundry basket into a scary monster that needs to get fed so it doesn’t attack. Then feed it clothes as quickly as possible.

Teaching tools: Why mention that you are cleaning at all? Next time you’re in your child’s play area, start a game of finding all the things on the floor that are blue. Put them in a pile or count them as they get put away. See if you have more red, yellow, or striped things next! You’ll be done in no time.

Hide and go seek: Hide something the child wants in a pile of mess. The only rule is that anything they touch or move while looking must be put away. This one works for older children and grown-ups, too. Want proof? Just hide their cellphone, keys, and purses somewhere and your house will be neat is a pin in no time.

Find the money: Hiding loose change is a great way to teach kids to pick up things when they sweep or dust, and kids LOVE to dust! Give them a duster and hide coins behind picture frames, under a lamp, between the rungs of a chair back, or in the corners of the room, but only if you want the job done to your satisfaction.

You know what’s no fun at all?  A clogged drain that won’t budge, a leaking pipe, or maybe even a jammed garbage disposal.  Still, if you want to be smiling a lot sooner than later, contact Your 1 Plumber for prompt and dependable service.  And before you know that, the plumbing crisis will be a thing of the past.