A fun way to get your preschooler to clean their room

One of my primary rules of cleaning is this:

If a 2 year old or a 4 year old can do it, then I'm not going to.

Did you catch that?

If my kid can clean it, mommy doesn't.

So I love to assign small tasks to my kids, like cleaning up the box of baby toys for our infant, picking up blocks, or putting silverware away.  And I try not to clean their rooms, at least not by myself.  But one challenge is that my 4 daughter gets distracted easily from her cleaning, and I often have to stand over her, telling her each thing that must be done next.

Recently, I had an epiphany.

1.  She wants to be like mommy.
2.  She loves to make lists.
3.  She feels really proud of herself when she's accomplished a cleaning project.

I finally added those tidbits together to come up with my latest way of keeping her on task while cleaning.

Make a list!

But she's 4.  She can't read anything beyond a three letter word.  So I've started making pictorial lists for her.

Here's how it works:

1.  I walk into her room and take note of what toys are left out.  
2.  I make a to-do list for her.
3.  I illustrate the list.
4.  I talk it through with her.  

If I didn't talk it through with her, she wouldn't know what the jobs are because I'm terrible at drawing.  So it helps to take a moment to explain that the funny shaped object is, in fact, a dog.



And then she cleans.  My daughter especially looks forward to checking the items off.  She must get that from her mommy.

At times, I still have to help her get back on task, but at this point, the list is really working for us!  When needed, I set an egg timer, with maybe two minutes per task, to help her stay motivated to keep up the good work.

We don't do this every single time we clean her room, or it would get old in a hurry.  But more often than not, she'll say "Mommy, I need my list."  And she always asks for a pen to check items off her list, but last time, she got sad because she doesn't know how to make check marks like me.  I gave her a quick lesson in check marks and she was good to go.

She feels so grown up with her list, and I find that when I give her responsibilities, she's more than happy to step up and follow through with them.

Now let's hear from you!  How do you motivate your young kids to clean their rooms?