Friday, June 12, 2009

Put a Spin on Cleaning

What better way to get your children excited for chores than making them become exciting and not a chore anymore. These are a few ideas to put a spin on your cleaning routine and make your children want to help you clean.

Ice Skate Mopping: I used to do this when I was growing up. Clear the space get some big sponges tie them to your children's feet pour water on the floor and get ready for some killer indoor ice skating. Make sure that there isn't a lot of water on the floor or you will end up with some sore bums and this is obviously something that requires a supervison especially with younger children. But 15 minutes of this and you will have a sparkling clean floor.

Squirt bottle dishes: If you have a double sink, fill both sides with water and soap, add a step stool if needs be, add a squirt bottle and squezze bottles (save old dish soap bottles, shampoo bottles, etc. for this) and add all the nonbreakable items to one side and breakable ones to the other side. Your child can have at all the nonbreakable items and you can handle the breakables and you can both have fun cleaning the dishes along side each other. .

Follow the chores- This would be great for Saturday clean up. Get some string and loop it throughout rooms in the house where a small child size chore needs to be done write the chore on a piece of paper and place it on the string. Then have your children follow the string to each chore, and maybe have the end of the string lead to a treat of some kind.

Basketball laundy toss- This is an old stand by but if it works why not? Get those clothes off the floor with ease as you shoot hoops with dirty shirts and socks into the laundry basket. Maybe you could have different pieces of clothing be worth differnt amount of points for example: shirts=5pts socks=1pt etc.

Laundry surprise- Before you add the clean clothes into the laundry basket put a new coloring book in the bottom or maybe a game you already have. Tell your children that when all the clothes have been folded their is a fun surprise at the bottom. What else could bring more motivation to folding clothes.

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