Getting Kids To Clean Up Their Room: Use Songs and a Timer

Don't we wish we could all clap our hands like Mary Poppins and the toys would jump into their boxes, the clothes would fold themselves, the hangers right themselves in neat order? While it's unlikely that Mary will impart that magical ability to us, she does have a trick that motivates Jane and Michael to clean up their room which we're sure will work on your children as well...

"A Spoonful of Sugar," is Mary Poppins preferred clean up song. We use something simpler and catchier we made up ourselves and couple it with a timer set for 10 minutes. Singing a song, we challenge the kids to beat the clock and offer them extra story time as a reward. Excited, they race around the room, toys marching into their box as quickly as the ones propelled by Mary's magic. No, they won't do a perfect job but the room's clean enough for now and cleaning up before bed is a habit they'll keep into adulthood.

[image: Mitikusa flickr, with a Creative Commons License]

Comments (4)

We do a quick pick up time, where the kids are assigned a number and they pick up items off the floor/bed/etc based on that number, and I hum the William Tell Overture while they run around putting things away.

And another thing my DH and I always say as we put things away is, "Everything has a..." and our kids finish the sentence with, "...place!"

Everything has a place. (Now if only I can remember that too)

getting our daughter to clean up when she was younger was much much easier - a little music... a little incentive and we had a spic and span room.

now that she is nearly six we are finding it to be more and more difficult. there is soooooooo much set up time involved in her play (most of the fun) and her projects are so much more involved (week and month long art projects) that clean up is incredibly difficult.

suggestions?

I've found that the best way to get my 2 year old boy to tidy up is to make as much noise as possible with the toys.

All his toys are stored by type in boxes, so I get him to smash them in. Won't work for precious items, but for things like bricks or plastic dinosaurs or his car collection, it works great.

We have a competition to see who can throw them in the loudest, and in two minutes he has tidied up.

However, my six year old girl's room is the messiest, and she is not even a teenager yet.