How to Get Kids to Clean Up After Themselves

With the right leadership and motivation, your kids can tackle their cleaning chores.

Getting your kids to clean their room can prove to be a difficult task. To them it is a chore and something that they don't want to do, but there are many ways to motivate them. The one thing to make clear right from the start is defining what a "clean room" is. There is no reason to go overboard and assume that kids will have a brand new room smelling of fresh pine once they've cleaned it. They are kids, and there needs to be compromise. A clean room when dealing with kids should include a bed that is made, a floor that you walk across without tripping over stuff, and nothing stuffed under the bed or on the floor of the closet. Once you have outlined what a clean room is, your kids will have a goal that they can now work towards.

Reinforcement is also an important thing to remember when approaching your kid's cleaning chores. Be sure to offer them rewards or consequences for completing or not completing their cleaning chores. Simple things like going to see a movie can be great rewards for kids if they have cleaned up their rooms. Likewise, "no TV or video games" can be reasonable consequences to motivate your kid's to do their cleaning chores.

For more advice on how to get your kids to clean up their bedrooms or any other room, PrefectingParenthood.com has a few answers.

I've looked around to find advice about how to get kids to clean their toys and messy rooms. I found a lot of suggestion, which might work, but have the downside of taking a long time and have a very high parental involvement. For me, the goal is to get the kids to clean up as quickly as possible -- and my kids are aged 2,4, and 6. Here are my techniques:

No Games: Make A Specific Clean-Up Activity

Clean-up time is clean-up time, not playing time or coloring time or reading time. Some people advocate making clean-up time a game, but I disagree (although I'm sure it works fine for them). The reason is that cleaning up isn't a fun game and I think children should learn to clean even when it isn't super-fun. That doesn't mean it has to be a bad time, it's just clean-up time.

How we make it clean up time is we say something like "Ok, dinner is almost ready. Let's clean up the living room." Then we all tackle the living room and clean until it's done. Only after clean-up is done is there an opportunity to do the next activity.

We have a little song that we sing (learned it from someone else) as we clean to keep our mind on cleaning. It's very simply chanting, "Clean-up. Clean-up. Everybody Clean-up." over and over again. Often we parents help, definitely if we've been playing with the children as well.

When is it clean-up time?

* If the kids have one set of toys out then they must put them away before using other toys.
* When they stop playing in a room the have to clean it up.
* Before bed they have to tidy up their clothes.
* After they finish their food they have to put dishes in the sink and wipe their place.
* When guests are coming over we do an extra-good job of tidying up.
* Ad hoc

Give Everyone Specific Clean-up Tasks

When we're all tackling a room, sometimes a child get distracted and then the others notice that he's not doing his fair share. The way we get around that is to delegate which types of mess each child is responsible for. It's even good to let the children choose. Example:

"Ok kids, we have to put away the lego and the cars! Who is doing which one?"

Then each child knows exactly their share of the work, and when they are done. If one finishes more quickly because the other doddles then everyone knows why and nobody argues. It's important to make the tasks about equal so they don't argue about who got the larger task. We also remind the distracted child that they should clean so we can do something else.

Reduce Chances for Mess

Toy Boxes: A parent's dear friend. Kids can haul out little storage boxes, about the size for filing, play with the toys from the box, then put them all back in the box. We have a box for Lego, and box for train sets, a box for cars and other vehicles, etc. The boxes go against the wall, or stacked, or on shelves. To clean up all we do is throw everything into the right box.

Fewer Toys: One great way to reduce the mess is to reduce the number of toys the kids have. After a certain point, we decided not to get them any more toys: You know they don't play with half of them! Any broken toys get tossed. If they want a new toy then they have to select an old toy to give away to a friend or the salvation army. This goes for books too. We love books, almost religiously, but I see that most books are about the same. Now we buy no more books, but go to the library every week to pick out three books for each child for the week; of course you have to return the old books.

Partition the Toys: A friend of ours gave us the great tip to partition and cycle the toys. So if there are four boxes worth of toys then store two boxes and leave two boxes for the kids. Every couple of weeks swap boxes. The toys will seem more interesting because the kids haven't seen them for awhile, and the messes will be smaller.

Consequences

Simply we just keep cleaning until it`s done. The kids know what the standard is so the consequence is totally natural: They`re stuck cleaning. There is no need for any other punishment besides that since it is exactly scaleable: Messy kids clean more, slow cleaners clean longer, and tidy, fast cleaning kids get to play more. It is also natural: The child doesn`t blame the parent since it`s obvious to them that their mess needs to be cleaned.

We also have a rule that any toys a parent find out-of-place are assumed to be garbage. We aren't unfairly strict about this. If we notice a crayon rolled under a chair we call to the kids, "Do you want these crayons thrown out?" Usually the child runs out and picks up the item they missed. If they really don't care about it, I ask them to throw it out. Regardless, the kids clean it.

Be a Relaxed Parent

I hesitate to suggest this to women, but allow yourself to live with a little chaos and you can relax a little more. Young kids can`t make a perfect bed, fold a perfect shirt, wipe their place perfectly. Hold them responsible for what they can handle, but realize that if you want more then you have to do it because they can`t. If it's going to make you uptight just live with it. If you you really need some clean areas then designate some parts of the house NO-TOY-ZONES. Kids don't bring their toys into those places. Our bedroom and office are the two NO-TOY-ZONES. You can always retreat there if you need some tidiness.

The most difficult thing when making your kids clean is keeping them on task. If you provide enough motivation and leadership, you'll find them cleaning their rooms in no time. When cleaning up other rooms, it can be very beneficial for you and your kids to clean up together. Working together makes cleaning up go by faster and more fun!