Sunday Suggestions

No More Tears
I have learned, over the last 7 or so years the whiniest complaint my kids have when it comes to cleaning is that the job is too big. Those tiny little hands and feet are not possibly able to pick up ALL those toys and walk across the room to put them away. It's just toooooo hard, moooommieeeee. Oh I've tried the logical, but you pulled all those toys out, you weren't too little for that arguement. This apparently forces my kids to lie about all the people who helped them make that mess. Brooke likes to blame Drama's youngest, even if she hasn't been to our house in weeks. Hey wait, maybe she did help make this mess, when's the last time we did more than bulldozer in here? When Breanna was a toddler she always answered the question "Who made this big mess?" with "Gogee" who is my friend's son Joey. In Bre's defense his mom was the one who started that game in our house, just because he wasn't there didn't mean she couldn't blame him.

After much yelling, screaming and crying, and that was just me, I came up with the "Cleaning Party" idea. We pick music to play really loud and then we all get to the singing, dancing and cleaning. Afterwards there is usually some sort of sweet treat, hey I said it's a party, so that doesn't count as bribery, right?

Now it's your turn. What are some of the ways you get your kids to help you clean?

4 comments:

My trick was to make it into small jobs. Like "pick up the trains and put them in this basket." When that was done it was "pick up the cars and put them in this basket." Sort of like "chunking it" is for reading.

July 6, 2008 at 12:11 PM  

Gee... you're much nicer than I am. Usually I say something like this:

"You're not coming out of this room until it's CLEAN Mister! I mean it! I don't CARE if you have to go to the bathroom, you should have thought about THAT before you made this mess! Good thing it's summer cause it looks like this mess might take you all month!"

OK, that's only when they've actually driven me to the brink of insanity. Which happens daily.

July 6, 2008 at 12:28 PM  

Threaten to beat them?!?! Maybe the party thing would be a better idea. But with an 11 year-old boy in the house the treat would have to be a peek at a victoria's secret catalog and I'm not up for all of that.

July 6, 2008 at 2:27 PM  

We used to do the cleaning party too! Now that they are older, the only way to get them to help is to bribe them with rides to do whatever it is they want to do. It works like magic.

July 6, 2008 at 9:41 PM  

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