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[quote=Anonymous]Think about the sources of daily mess and put systems in place to minimize them.

Messy floors: train kids to take off shoes at the door and eat only at tables.  Keep a small stick vacuum near the kitchen table to quickly tidy crumbs after meals so that animal crackers crumbs at 10am don’t migrate through the entire house by 7pm.  If you have pets, keep a pet brush and a dustbuster somewhere convenient to the living room and at least once a week when you are watching tv, brush your pet thoroughly and suck up the fur right away so there is less fur shedding randomly.

Laundry: for day-to-day, I only buy machine washable clothing.  I keep oxyclean max stain remover spray in the mudroom and near every hamper.  I don’t go through clothes when I do a load, I notice how messy my kid is when I strip them and spray the stain immediately before tossing in the hamper.  I don’t sort loads.  Everything gets washed on delicate and dried or hung on a hanger in the laundry room immediately to dry.  I only fold what matters.  Kids are in charge of their socks, undies and pajamas.  If they want to dump all three in the bottom drawer and dig through as they go, then no worries.

Food prep mess: we have Replay plastic plates and matching silicon lids.  The plates are sectioned.  When I make a meal from scratch, I portion out meals for the kids from the leftovers, pop the lids on and store in the fridge ready to reheat.  There’s no point in having an “easy” leftover night if I am going to have to pull out three different serving dishes, use serving utensils to scoop out portions, reheat on one plate then serve to my kid on another, etc.  So if I am not cooking I am not cleaning anything but plates and utensils either.  We all use the same cup all day.

Toys: Minimize!  I do a cull before birthdays and Christmas so that before we get a bunch of new stuff we made room.  I also am not afraid to toss or donate.  Each kid has a designated space for toys that are just their own random treasures (like the prize they got at the dentist and that shiny rock they found) and when it gets too full they have to choose some stuff to let go of.  Everything else is communal and most of their toys go on high-up shelves in a closet they can’t easily reach.  So if they want to get something out I come get it down for them—they don’t have the ability to dump out 5 different kinds of toys all at once.  There are times when we may get a ton of toys out all at once but the important thing is that it doesn’t just happen randomly when they have 15 minutes to play while I make breakfast.  We only make a really huge mess when we actually have time to play and clean up.

Kid art: This may not be an issue for everyone but my kids love to create projects.  We keep all their art stuff in a rolling cart in the kitchen.  All art supplies are crayola brand washable.  You pay more for the washable crayons, etc. but it is so worth it. Each kid has a caddy with a set of markers, a roll of tape, a pair of scissors, bottle of Elmer’s glue, a pencil and sharpener, etc. and I have trained them to just bring the whole caddy with them to the table when they want to work on something.  I always keep a tablecloth on the kitchen table so I can easily clean up spilled glue, etc.  I keep dozens of these tablecloths handy so there is always a clean one.  There is a huge bin in my kitchen where all finished art work goes.  About once a month I go through and toss most of it and put a few special things into a file folder for each kid, with one “file” for each year.  If there is stuff that is too big or is 3D I take photos and/or video of my kid telling me about their creation before we toss it.  They have a display shelf and a bulletin board in their room where they can keep stuff too but the vast majority ends up documented and tossed.[/quote]

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