Chores for fun: how to get your kids involved with the cleaning

Kids are messy. It’s a fact. If you’re fed up of constantly cleaning up after your kids, whether you’re picking up their toys and books or cleaning up after accidental spillages, it might be time to teach the kids to clean and start keeping the house a bit tidier. By making cleaning and tidying up seem more fun, it will get them into good habits from an early age, and help you keep the house looking great. Find out how to keep your house tidy with our cleaning activities for kids.

Teaching kids to clean

With just a few simple tips and tricks, not only can you get the little ones to help out with household chores, but they may even start to enjoy it!

Give them their own supplies

Investing in some kids’ cleaning toys is a great way to get them joining in with cleaning at home. Kids love having their own things and mimicking what their parents do. With their own little broom, or dustpan and brush, they’ll want to follow you around the house as you’re cleaning. If they’re copying your every move, why not ask them to sweep over any areas you haven’t yet covered? Once they start getting the hang of it, they’ll be willing to do it over and over again.

Why not turn the chores into a game? First one to finish gets a prize! It’s bound to be a winner. As they get older, and outgrow their cleaning toys, and they’ll be able to move onto using yours. Why not also get older kids involved with the vacuuming? Make vacuuming easy for them with a cordless vacuum cleaner, and keeping floors clean and tidy at home will be a breeze.

Set them challenges

A great way to get children tidying up is to tell them you’ve got an important challenge for them. A challenge will appeal to their sense of adventure, and they won’t be able to resist. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’ve done a load of washing, and it needs sorting out and putting away. Set them a challenge of separating and pairing up all the socks. Another activity they might enjoy is sorting through all the clean clothes and making piles of each individual family member’s clothes.

With both of these challenges, get them to show you what they’ve done, and you can grade their performance. Knowing they’ll be scored at the end will inspire their performance – kids love it when they get good marks at school, so why not introduce this at home?

Make it a competition

Take the idea of cleaning challenges and turn it up a notch by introducing a bit of friendly competition. Kids want to be the best, so why not let them show you who is? If they’re doing the same chores on a regular basis, why not get them to do it against the clock? Challenge them to try and beat their best times. If they have to tidy their bedroom on a regular basis, time them. They’ll do everything they can to improve previous performances. A bedroom tidying time challenge also encourages them to keep their room tidier – with fewer toys and books scattered about their room, the less time it will take to tidy up, and the chances of beating their best times will improve.

Competitive cleaning games for kids are great for a little (hopefully friendly!) sibling rivalry. Give your children cleaning challenges, such as who can pick up the most toys in a minute, or who can clean their room the fastest. Brothers and sisters always want to see who is best at something – so why not take advantage of their competitive nature with a bit of cleaning?!

Be rewarding

A little bit of motivation is (almost) guaranteed to work when it comes to chores for kids. Before they start, let them know what they’ll get as a reward. Earning stickers for completing household chores works well. Printing out a chart for them to put stickers on should go down a treat. Whenever they finish a chore, reward them with a sticker. Set them a target to aim for – e.g. when they get to 20 stickers, give them an appropriate prize. A weekly reward chart can work wonders too. If they earn enough stickers in the week, give them a treat at the weekend.

Getting the little ones to help out around the house isn’t always easy, but by finding ways to make it fun, you’ll have children cleaning in no time at all.