I like a clean house. After we had two kids, I allowed the clutter and chaos to stress me out. I rode my family pretty hard and made everyone misrable.
I tried everything – Saturday chores and a half-hearted attempt at sticker charts. I even hired a cleaning service – and stressed about cleaning everything before they showed up.
I didn’t want to do everything because I wanted them to learn how to clean for themselves, but I was going out of my mind.
Then I discovered micro-chores.
Basically, I walk through the house and make mental notes of age-appropriate chores that my kids can finish in 10-15 minutes. I check their rooms, their bathroom floor, and the livingroom. On the weekends, randomly, I call the kids in from what they are doing and give them their micro-chore. Sometimes it is something they can finish together. Sometimes they have individual chores. Regardless, I try to make it something they can do in 10-15 minutes that moves them one step close to a clean room and the family one step closer to a clean house.
Some examples:
- Go to your room and put all the toys that have wheels where they go.
- Pick up all the clothes in your bathroom and put them with the dirty clothes.
- Make your bed.
- Pick up all the stuffed animals and put them where they go.
- Switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer. (We have front-loaders.)
My kids know that once they’ve finished their micro-chore that they can go back to whatever they were doing before I interrupted. If they complain, then we have to stop and clean the whole thing together. (I only had to enforce this once during Saturday cartoons.)
Things aren’t perfect and we still have our moments. (Under the bed is not where the toys with wheels go!) By and large, though, cleaning up is a lot less stressful.
Micro-chores work well for me, but I know they aren’t the only thing out there. What do you do to get your kids involved in cleaning the house?
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We use a similar process with our five-year-old. He's always more than willing to "help" with something smaller, but if ever asked to "clean his room", he would rather sit in his room all day than pick up one toy. We are known to use numbers as a game. We place pieces of paper with numbers in a bowl and draw a number (1-30), offer a chore based off the number and use our own made up bingo cards to see who can "win" the movie selection or game of the week!
That is a really cool game, Mysti! I'm going to try it and let you know how it goes!