New Cleaning Method?

It's hard to keep up with the house with 3 young kids running around and one who especially loves to undo what I've done in the name of "helping mom".

It's frustrating when I am cleaning up a room and have to pick up everyone's stuff that they've left out. I usually just put things into piles and then have everyone put their piles away. But the piles didn't always get put away right away and sometimes I would forget to follow through. That led to piles still sitting around and the kids would just scatter them again.

A lot of the time I would also just put things into a bin or laundry basket, unseparated by who's-who's, to put away when there was more time but that also led to bins and baskets full of stuff sitting around. And I was usually the one putting everyone's stuff away eventually. Or hiding it in my room or a corner of another room. Out of sight, out of mind.

I was just having a hard time. (You'd think I'm really not very good at housekeeping....It's okay, I think that too.)

The binning usually works pretty well for me as long as time is taken to clear them out because it gets stuff picked up fast. I had an inspiration the other day and ran with it. It combines the binning with accountability of each person in my family.

First, everyone now has their own muck bucket.Anytime someone cleans a room and picks up stuff that belongs to someone else they can put it in their bucket instead of having to track that person down. I think it will eliminate arguments about people's things being in the way of their cleaning a room. Something I remember from growing up and have started to see already in my own kids.

The second part to this is everyone has an envelope taped to the refrigerator and a card with their name on it in their bucket. Whenever someone puts something in a bucket, they take that person's card and stick it in their envelope on the fridge. Since everyone is in the kitchen several times a day, those cards are hard to miss. Everyone is accountable and if they see their card in their envelope, it means they have stuff to put away. Once they empty their bucket, they can put their card back in their bucket and stack it up with the other empty ones.

The great thing about this is it holds parents accountable as well as kids so if the kids see one of our cards on the fridge they let us know about it and mom and dad can see quickly who still hasn't cleaned their bucket out and can keep on top of it!

The other great thing is I think it will make it easier to get the kids to tidy up more rooms than just the toy room now that they know what to do with stuff that's not theirs. I can ask Gabby to clean up the living room or the dining room and she'll know what to do with everything now.

I put this to the test yesterday after tidying the house. It made tidying fast and everyone of us had stuff in our buckets so all our cards were on the fridge. I introduced the plan at dinner and then had to dash off to a doctor's appointment. When I got back, everyone had put their stuff away and mine was the only card left on the fridge. Of course, the kids held me responsible and of course I had to put my stuff away.

I can actually see this working! And I'm excited about it. Fingers crossed!