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At the end of the day, there are always things everywhere.
Toys, clutter, papers, crap, whatever. The buildup of crap is inevitable and it kinda drives me nuts. I used to spend about 5-10 minutes tidying up while my husband put our oldest to bed, back when there was only one child. But now, there are 3 kids.
(Actually, I’m editing this post and there are now 5 kids!!)
3 times the kids somehow means 200 times the crap. (Imagine the math on 5 kids!!)
SO we’ve enlisted the help of our children, lest they think there is a magic cleaning elf who cleans up all their toys after they go to bed.
Where We Started
We used to have an 800 square foot apartment with a toy shelf in the living room. The babies would dump it out every day.
Since I can’t go to bed with our only living space looking like that & we didn’t want our 1 year old to think she just gets to take every toy out of every bin and throw them all over the house and the magic clean up elves pick it up every night, we started having her help.
I don’t really remember when or why or how it occurred to us that we should teach her to clean up. Maybe around when she was 11 or 12 months? Hubs really is the one who taught her.
She didn’t get it at first, but we just started for the habit.
Before bath time, he and Addie would go in her room and pick up the toys and clothes one at a time. It used to make me giggle, just standing outside the door and watching him help her learn to clean up the mess.
“Adelyn, put the blocks in the bucket.”
“Good, now put this block in the bucket.”
“Put all the blocks in the bucket.”
And then on to the clothes.
“Adelyn, put the clothes in the drawer.”
At first, there were lots of reminders and she maybe did 10% and we did 90%. That’s fine; she was 1.
We also did brief time-outs for not obeying once she did understand. Once she clearly understood what we were telling her – “put that book on the shelf” but looked up, smiled, and ran away with it instead… as if to say “do you mean it?” then it becomes disobedience. Here is generally how we help our 1-2 year olds learn to obey.
But, it didn’t take that long for her to ‘get it.’ Not that she cleans perfectly or always obeys when I say “put this away.”
But, she has learned what it means to “clean up the _______.” And we all clean up for about 5 minutes at night. It’s just part of the routine now.
Honestly, I’m so glad we stumbled on this idea. I was so surprised that she could learn to pick up the toys so young, but hey, it works for us.
How It’s Going
10 years after original writing that post, I can say with 100% certainty – the sooner you involve your kids in cleaning up, the better!
Honestly, our kids aren’t perfect & they’re very messy!! BUUUUT – they all help clean up pretty darn cheerfully basically every day.
And I’m sure that’s at least in part because 1.) it’s a daily habit in our home and (2.) We start them young!!
We also keep toy systems simple and toys to a minimum.
Hope that helps!!