If your kids are anything like mine, they do not enjoy cleaning up. The twins are in an especially tough stage with cleaning up right now and it can get very overwhelming. They love to dump out a bucket of toys and then walk away. Sometimes our living room will get so covered with toys that they hurt themselves just walking around. We all know how much it hurts to walk on a Lego but other toys pose problems as well. Step on a magnatile or a Hotwheel car and your foot slides forward, shoes on the floor cause you to trip and math cubes hurt just as bad as a Lego!
I tend to get overstimulated with noise and mess so there are many times where I feel overwhelmed with the mess but it does not bother them. There have been times in the past where the mess and noise overwhelm me so I try to get them to stop playing just to clean up. Its so difficult because they truly don’t understand why we would have to clean up just to start playing again; instead it’s better to have certain times of the day we clean up. Such as before lunch and before dinner. Depending on how they are feeling before bedtime, we sometimes try to do a “whole family clean up” before dinner; other nights I will just do a quick walk through before going to bed myself.
It’s a shot in the dark whether or not it will work for me to just say “Okay, now its time to clean up!” So I am going to share three different ideas we use to make cleaning up fun!
- Freeze clean up: I will tell the kids what rooms we need to clean up (usually it’s our living room and clearing off the dining room table) and then start playing music. Much like freeze dance, they have to clean up while the music is playing and then freeze when the music stops. It’s always fun to make a goofy pose for the freezes with whatever toy was in your hand while cleaning.
- The Floor Is Lava Cleaning: all of the kids have to start standing by a wall and when I yell “Clean up!!!” they run to the middle of the room to clean. After a little bit I will then do a countdown to the floor being lava and when I get to 1 they need to either run back to the wall or stand on our Nugget couch. I’ll then wait a few moments and yell “Clean up!” again. It usually takes about three rounds of this for them to get everything all clean.
- Now this idea was my husbands and worked so well for him, I was a surprised but it works for me too! He sat all of the kids on the couch and yelled out each item that needed to be cleaned up. Then the kiddos got to yell out when it was the thing they wanted to clean. So my husband would yell “Shoes” and Jack yells “Me!” Then my husband yells “Magnet dolls” and Elizabeth yells “Me!” If two kids yell that they want to clean something they they can. The tough spot is when no one yells for something, then we may have to switch to telling someone they have to do it. But I will say more often than not, the kids will volunteer for things
This isn’t a game but something that I have found to help the transition period is recognizing what they are currently doing; they aren’t able to just switch their brains off of play or reading and into cleaning. So I do usually give them an expectation for time or an indicator for when it is time to clean up. I’ll say “I see that you are really enjoying your coloring, when your done with that heart we are going to clean up the toys on the floor” If they want to color more after that it’s fine. As I mentioned earlier though the twins are very much in a stage of pulling things out then walking away so I’m working with them to clean up when they’re done with a toy.
The other thing that I am trying to tell myself is that these stages go by so fast. I saw a post on Instagram a few weeks ago where a mom was standing in spilled goldfish and she shared how she had been praying for a baby for so long and now she was grateful to have her baby there making messes. It was a great reminder that I am in the season I prayed to be in for so long. I prayed for children and now I have them and I know it goes by so fast! The twins will be in kindergarten next year and my days will not be filled with little toys all over the floor much longer so I am also trying to cherish the toys and mess while it is here.
I still love seeing how they play and imagine and I will take that along with the mess any day. I pray that some of these “games” help you with your kiddos, and if you have fun ways your kiddos clean up, please share them below!
Blessings, Ellen
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