How to Get Your Kids to Clean Up: 6 Tried-and-true Strategies
Getting kids to clean up after themselves doesn’t have to be a chore. Try these simple but effective strategies for encouraging kids to clean up without a fight.
My children are brilliant. They already understand concepts of physics that I didn’t learn until college. What?!? That’s right, my boys have officially mastered the second law of thermodynamics.
“What is the second law of thermodynamics?” you ask. Let me explain. It’s all about ENTROPY.
Entropy is a measure of disorder in a system. You’re beginning to see why kids are experts at this, right?
The second law of thermodynamics states: “Changes occurring in natural systems always proceed in such a way that the total amount of disorder in the universe is either unchanged or increased.” (Source)
The common example given to illustrate this law is that of an apple decaying. If left alone, an apple will increase in disorder as it decays over time. You never see a pile of mushy decayed apple reform into a crispy, shiny piece of fruit. That would be contrary to this law of nature.
My boys effectively demonstrate this concept daily. If left alone, they will automatically increase the disorder of anything they encounter…and quickly! It’s a law of nature.
Take a look at the before/after pictures below:
The first is a picture of my kitchen right after I cleaned the floor. See how pretty it looks? The second was taken just ONE HOUR later. Seriously.
See? My kids are brilliant physicists!
The problem is that cleaning doesn’t come as naturally to my kids as making messes does. Bummer.
However, I have a few tricks up my own sleeves, and I’ve figured out over the years how to get my kids to clean up with minimal complaining.
6 tried-and-true ways to get kids to clean up
1. Clean with them
It would be ideal to say, “clean up this mess” and have it be done, but that’s not realistic for a four-year-old and a two-year-old. By getting on the floor with them and cleaning together, I send the message that this is a team effort and I’m able to keep the momentum going (since a certain four-year-old I know has an impressive ability to get “distracted”).
2. Give each child a specific task to complete
“Clean up the toys” is too broad for little minds to process. Help them break up a larger task into smaller chunks by suggesting, “Pick up the blocks and put them in this bucket” or “Find all the pieces to the fire truck puzzle.” In addition to getting them cleaning, you’re also walking your kids through the process of tackling projects that seem overwhelming…a valuable life skill.
3. Give kids choices
The power of choice is important to kids. So much of their daily life is chosen for them that kids (especially toddlers) fight for any amount of control they can have (this strategy applies to so many more things than cleaning…it’s how we survived the terrible twos). You don’t have to give them a choice to clean or not to clean, but you can give them some control over the situation by asking, “Do you want to start with the Legos or the books?”
4. Make it part of your daily routine
We typically try to clean up one activity before moving on to another one, but sometimes the kids get busy playing and I don’t enforce it. However, every day we have a quick 5-10 minute tidy before lunch, before dinner, and before bedtime. My boys know we will do this, and they are pretty good about it because it’s just part of our daily routine. By cleaning up a few times throughout the day, it keeps the mess from getting too overwhelming. Plus, this way I don’t spend my precious quiet time cleaning up their messes. Win, win!
5. Make it a game!
- Clean by color: Put all the red Legos away, then the yellow, etc.
- Have a race: Little Man loves to guess which thing can be cleaned up the fastest and then have a race with me. He’ll tell me, “I bet I can clean the trains up before you clean up the Lincoln Logs!”
- Play the Super Spy Clean Up Game: Think of secret code names, set a timer, and clean the room before the “bomb” goes off! This is by far my most successful way to get kids moving. I’ve used it with my own kids, neighbors, nieces and nephews, and any other random children who happen to be around when there are toys to pick up. 🙂 Read more about how the game works here.
- Bring out the trash monster: If you have a space with a lot of trash (like after a party, or after opening Christmas presents, etc.), grab a trash bag and tell the kids, “This is the trash monster…and he LOVES to eat trash!” I really ham it up, saying, “FEEEED me!” and making chomping sounds while opening and closing the top of the bag. If your kids are anything like mine, they will RACE to feed the monster, giggling as they try to get their hand back out of the bag before the trash monster chomps down on them. You’ll be amazed by how fast all that garbage disappears!
6. Give incentives
I’m all about bribery in moderate amounts. It doesn’t have to be candy or toys (goodness knows we don’t need more toys!), but it’s important to show kids positive natural consequences. For example, try explaining, “When we’ve cleaned up the trains, we’ll have more room on the floor for a dance party.” Or, use a fun trip to the park or library (especially if you’re already planning to go anyway) as motivation to clean up: “When we get these toys cleaned up, then it will be time to go to the park!” (Read more here about the power of “when-then” statements).
My house is not perfectly clean. If it was, it would probably mean my kids were watching too much TV and aren’t making enough creative messes. However, by using these strategies with my kids I’m able to keep our home looking relatively presentable and teach them about working as a team and contributing to the family.
Do you have any fun ways to encourage kids to get cleaning? Please share!
These truly are great tips! Thanks for reminding and highlighting them, because I sometimes struggle mightily in being ‘specific’ when it comes to “clean up”! P.S. I love that floor shot, because I have the same thing happening over here with a 3yo and 10mo! 🙂
Thanks, Kendall. Isn’t the floor shot so disappointingly true?! It’s how my floor looks most days by bedtime (in fact, there are crayon wrappers ALL over my floor as I write this because the 2-year-old dumped out the whole crayon box this morning right before we had to leave the house.) Sometimes, we see all the pretty pictures online, but sometimes I think we need to see the “uncropped” version of each other’s lives. Thanks for reading!
Really great tips here! I have tried some but, can try others…making it part of our routine will probably make the biggest difference.
Routines are my saving grace around here. I thrive on order, and my boys do, too. I love how they don’t fight me on it anymore because they know it’s expected and we work together to make it fun and quick. Good luck with making it work for your family!
Great tips! We have started with our little guy to make a game of throwing the duplo pieces back in the bucket and he actually loves it!
Yep, that’s one of the first cleaning “games” we did. Then we started counting them as we went, and doing it by color…it’s so fun to see how many ways we can turn chores into fun learning games.
This is absolute genius. I never knew my kids had mastered that law, now I realize what was happening all that time.
Your suggestions are SO good, girl! Tweeted and pinned, I really love how you make it practical. In fact, you win. I’m featuring you next week on Tuesday Talk because man. Moms need to read this – your incentives are great.
And I always worked alongside my kids too, it gave them the feeling that I was with them in this and not using them to get my housework done. lol.
Great post! Love your little spot over here.
Thanks so much for your kind words, Ruthie! There are so many things that I struggle with as a mom, but occasionally I feel like I have a few good ideas, and I love to hear that others find them helpful, too! I’ll look forward to joining Tuesday Talk again next week.
I am so trying this!!! We have been working hard to gt our toddler to help out!
I hope you find some success with these tips. Start young, and they’ll get it eventually.
I have seriously been struggling with this.. and you shared some amazing tips! Pinned!
Glad you found it useful, Lauren. It’s kind of a never-ending battle, but at least I don’t feel like my side of the army is being trampled by the messes any more…most of the time. 🙂
Great tips! Love the choices option! I think they are more prone to do something if they believe they are choosing to do it and not being told!
That’s exactly how I feel. I use this tactic ALL the time with my kids, not just with cleaning. It’s so important for them to have some measure of control over their lives. Even if it’s mostly perceived. 🙂
These are some fabulous tips! Kids are SO MESSY! Another tip I would add to the list is to minimize stuff (as in toys). Of course, we can’t minimize crumbs, but I have found that putting up at least half the toys and then rotating them out makes the toys so much more enjoyable (and easy to clean up) for my littles!
Rotating toys is a great idea. I keep meaning to do this more diligently, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I do it with books though, and that has been successful, and ever since I put the majority of the toys away in a closet we’ve had so much less mess-making. They can get the toys at any time, but having them out of sight makes it easier to keep things tidy.
Love these! Especially “make it a game”, my kids always fall for that one!
Don’t you love when you can trick them into having fun AND doing what you want? WIN WIN!
This was really helpful! Thanks for sharing!
Awesome tips! I’ll have to implement these as London grows up 🙂
we are all about making cleaning a game! this is a great list.
I have a 3 year old and sometimes she gets upset when I tell her to clean up. I like your tip for making it a game. I have tried a cleanup song and it helped. So maybe I will make it part of our routine. I’ve also been working on explaining to her we can’t move on to the next activity until she cleans. Pinning your tips for my toddler board. Good post, Meg!
We sing clean up songs, too. Sometimes I just make them up, and my boys think that’s pretty hilarious…or they ask me what I’m doing and look at me like I’m crazy. 🙂
Very creative introduction 🙂 I’m horrible about making clean up part of the routine, but I think that would help. I love these games too.