How to Turn Cleaning Time into Game Time for Your Kids

We all know that cleaning up is one of those things that kids absolutely hate to do, but if you follow these simple steps and incorporate these games into clean up time, your kids may be happily skipping off to clean that room without being told.

When my siblings and I were younger we found that with all the toys, paper sniping, crayon paper, and the like, our rooms needed cleaning several times a day. Very frustrating as you might imagine. There being many of us we put our heads together devised a system of games that we used to get the room clean in a fun, inventive way.

Most of the games focus on teamwork and sorting to distribute the workload. So no one person has to clean their room alone.

Below is a list of the games, how they¡¦re played and the rules.

Woof Chase

This game is named for the sound you make when you chase one of the ¡¥idlers¡¦ as we used to call them.

Number of people to play: 3+

Equipment: just a dirty room

How to Play: To play this game first you¡¦ll have give everyone a title.

Toys Executive, representative, handler etc. - This person is in charge of making sure all the toys go were they belong.

Clothes Executive- Same duty as the Toy person, but for clothes instead.

All other categories of stuff get their handlers too.

Chaser- The chaser is a sort of watchman to make sure no one is idle.

After everyone is assigned their job, the game and cleaning can begin.

All handlers are racing to get their respective materials in their places first.

As soon as your category is neatly filed away you may now take the place of chaser, which is basically the easiest part. The previous chaser takes up a new category if there be any.

When some one is caught being idle or horsing around, the Chaser goes after them to either tickle, playfully pinch or in another friendly way, remind them of the task at hand.

By the time everyone has gotten a chance to be the Chaser; all the categories of stuff have been cleaned away and the room is clean, all in the disguise of a game.

Train Clean Up

The name says it all about this game which is essentially a train carrying out of place room wares, to their proper homes. It is very popular among younger kids.

Number of people to play: 2+

Equipment: A crate, box, laundry pan or other medium sized container for each child to serve as train cars.

How to play: The same concept of handlers for each class of things goes in this game, but instead your train car will carry your cargo.

First all of the ¡¥cargo¡¦ must be divided into lanes. This could mean instead of pushing everything under the bed, pushing it into two or three lanes so you have clear passage to pass your train car through.

Next designate your depot or station. This is were you will stop when your car is loaded, to distribute everything to their places.

Now everyone grabs a car and starts out from the station to extract their specific cargo from the lanes.

Once you¡¦ve extracted all your cargo from the lanes, your train car retires. After everyone has finished removing their category/categories from the lanes, then the room is clean. Choo-Choo!

Clean Your Country!

This is a game we designed when our rooms were large and hard to clean.

Number of people to play: 2+

Equipment: A makeshift flag for each country and masking tape for boundaries

How to play: The charm of this game is how the rooms are divided into small countries.

Every country has its president who is responsible for getting their country clean the soonest. A make-believe pass allows each president to enter another¡¦s country to put away something or such. After a country is completely clean, remove the boundaries and the president may go on vacation. When all the presidents earn their vacation, the continent is clean.

These are only some of the games we used to play to get our rooms clean, and many times our parents would find us making a mess just to clean it up again. So next time you say ¡§Time to clean your room.¡¨ introduce some games and you kids will definitely thank you instead of fuss.