How to Get Your Family to Help With the Spring Cleaning

Spring cleaning is a big job. While it’s certainly something you can do on your own, you don’t have to. In fact, there is benefit to having your family help with the job. It alleviates some of the work you have to do. Children can learn the value of hard work. They can contribute to the care and keeping of your home. And perhaps they’ll learn a little bit more about what you do to keep your home nice.

Getting your family to help isn’t always easy. Here are seven tips and ideas to help you enlist their help.

1. Bribe them. Money talks. Or if your children are young then stickers, treats or even an afternoon at the movies can motivate people to help. Come up with a reward before you approach them with their jobs.

2. Make it fun with music. Music makes any job easier. Find family friendly, fun, and motivating music for the entire family to enjoy.

3. Make it a game. Consider making the spring cleaning task a game. Everyone likes games, right? Consider timing each person. The person that gets their job done the fastest wins. Or the person that gets their job done the best wins. You might also make it a game of speed and skill. For example, finish a task and then run to a designated place in the room and take a token. The person who collects the most tokens wins. Of course their work needs to be checked. If they didn’t do a good job then they lose tokens.

4. Celebrate after. Have a post spring cleaning party. Order pizza take out and watch a movie together. Have a family game night. Go out to your favorite family restaurant. Or do something fun like go bowling, skating or to your local indoor amusement park.

5. Give them choices. Consider making a list of all of the jobs that need to be accomplished. Then ask your children or family members to each choose three tasks. This way they have some control over the process. And they have chosen tasks that best suit their preferences.

6. Provide guidance. Create a step by step procedure of how you want the task to be completed. For example, if one child is cleaning out a closet list everything that goes into the job. Consider creating a checklist for them. They can easily follow the list and you know everything will get done.

7. Make it age/skill appropriate. Make sure each family member has age appropriate tasks. You wouldn’t want to ask a five year old to clean out the refrigerator. You might find that they throw everything away! If you’re letting your children choose which cleaning jobs the take on, consider grouping them by age. That way your child can choose from a list of jobs you know they can complete.

When you enlist the help of your entire family, spring cleaning can be completed in no time. You’ll feel as if you’ve all accomplished something together. And you can celebrate your success when you’re done.