How to Make Spring Cleaning With Kids Fun!
As one hemisphere moves into the Spring and Summer months, another moves into their Fall and Winter. No matter what season it is for you at the moment, you may be looking to tackle some cleaning around your home to celebrate the changing season! This morning I would like to introduce you to the wonderful Cloe Matheson. Cloe is joining us this morning from beautiful New Zealand and is sharing 5 tips with us on making spring cleaning with your children fun!
Every parent knows that getting the kids to do their cleaning chores is no easy task. This can make the whole process of spring cleaning a fraught experience, but since it pays to teach your children how to clean now so that they’re set up for the future (and their help has the potential to significantly ease your own workload), instituting a house-wide seasonal clean is a must. The trick to bringing your kids around to the idea is to associate their given chores with fun and play – and here are 5 sneaky ways to do just that.
Make it a family or group task
Cleaning will be both quicker and more attractive to younger kids when it is framed as a collaborative activity. For spring cleaning, you might set aside a day on which all family members are present so that the entire household can work together. Stopping for morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea breaks as a group will help to sustain everyone’s energy levels, and if you have more than one child, you can assign tasks in groups of two or three to make things more fun.
Sort them a cleaning kit
Insiders say that the trick to getting kids on board with your spring cleaning is to arm them with their own kid-friendly supplies. Younger kids will be especially enthusiastic about having their own cleaning caddies! A quick trip to your local department store should suffice for putting together a cheap toolkit, containing tools such as nature-based cleaning sprays, microfiber wiping cloths, and feather dusters.
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Game time
The great news is that kids can see cleaning as fun by using just a little imagination. Try, for example, giving your kids some old socks to wear, and let them slide along hardwood or linoleum floors in pursuit of that elusive animal, the “dust bunny”.
Make decluttering fun and meaningful
Decluttering is a vital part of spring cleaning children's’ rooms in the house, but it can take a lot of nagging to get your kids to sort out their stuff. To start with, frame the process as a detective game or even a nostalgic rifle-through-the-past – remind your kids how fun it can be to look back on what they wore or used to fit when they were smaller! Then give them three categories to divide their belongings: keep, throw out, and give to charity.
Hint: for older kids, it’s worth emphasizing the charitable aspect of clothes donation (especially the importance of saving or giving away as much usable content as possible, rather than letting it go to waste) to get them enthused about the process. Another tip for sorting clothes is to let your children stage a fashion show, and have the entire family give their input on what the model should keep or donate. Concerning storage, you can increase the chances of your kids effectively clearing their drawers and wardrobes by introducing the possibility of a shipping container storage solution which could function as a space to keep out-of-season clothes or extra toys, or even a much-needed playroom.
Introduce a reward
Hopefully, if you’ve followed these steps, the actual cleaning won’t be as arduous as you’d feared – but to make sure that your children actually get on and do the work, a reward scheme does wonders. A half hour of vacuuming done? Perhaps award them a mini chocolate bar or an episode of their favorite TV show. Have they cleaned their whole bedroom? Maybe it’s time for a family movie night out after the spring cleaning is done!
Cloe Matheson is a freelance writer from New Zealand. She focuses her pieces on family and lifestyle. You can read more of her published articles on her Tumblr.