Reply to Letting kids play vs clean house

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Letting kids play vs clean house "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a neat freak and I handle this by having an extremely satisfying system for organizing and putting away toys, games, art supplies, snacks, etc. And then I take great pleasure in putting the house back in order efficiently at the end of a day of play session. Sorting various building toys into their labeled and correctly sized containers before putting them back in the shelf. Oh yes. Gathering all the books from around the house and putting them back on the correct shelves? Thrilling. Packing the art supplies back away onto our “art cart” with alloys labeled bins and cups? Love it.

Think of children as a next level challenge to your neat freak ways. Then let them play all day and put your skills to work. Bonus if you can turn cleaning up into a game they too enjoy.

Also, even if this sounds like a lot of work, who is going to STOP THEIR KIDS FROM HAPPILY PLAYING on a chilly Saturday in November right before the launch of the holiday season. You know if you put away their toys they are just going to demand you entertain them, right? Right??????[/quote]

Tell me more about this system. Is this what you do instead of relaxing at night? If I spend all my time cleaning after the kids are asleep, I never actually enjoy the clean house.[/quote]

No, it takes 10-15 minutes to straighten up the house at the end of the day, including toys but also stuff like mail, shoes and jackets, etc. that migrate through the house during the day.

A place for everything snd everything in its place. Make sure toys are stored near where they are played with. Make sure there are separate containers for each category of toy. Think about the surface in the play area— does it help small pieces stay in the play area (not roll across the room). Are surfaces conducive to quick clean up (i.e. tables with bins underneath for Lego’s, a smooth carpet that is easy to gather things off of, etc.).

And yes, purging items when needed and creating toy rotations (I store out-of-rotation toys in bins on high shelves in the toy area, and when it’s time to rotate out I just pull down a bin and trade it’s contents for one of the lower shelves).

It rarely takes more than 7-8 minutes to clean up toys and often I can assign parts of it to kids (“put all the dolls in the doll bin and make sure extra clothes go in the doll clothes bin on the same shelf”). DH also participates. We just do it all around 5pm as a transition to dinner/evening. It is not burdensome and I never clean kid areas after kids are in bed— that’s my time.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics