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10 Ways to Teach a Child to Clean Up

1. Offer to help, work side by side, but stop if they are not helping
2. Set a timer 10 minutes before clean up time.  Pre-warn your child when the 10 minutes are up, it is time to put things away
3. Keep art supplies, toys, and blocks organized in plastic bins. Store where your child can reach them
4. Have regular chores for your child:  setting the table, helping with dishes, making her bed, etc. Make it a routine
5. On Saturdays make each chore worth points. Clean the bathroom toilet and sink was 2 points, pick up clothes and put them in the laundry room was 1 point.  We started with 5 points a week.  I wrote down every chore I could think of on 3x5 cards with their points (there were close to 20 chores) and put them on the kitchen table Saturday morning.  Not all the chores were picked but it gave the kids a sense of choice
6. After cleanup, place the items your child forgot to put away in a separate box.  He can ‘earn’ them back with a little extra work
7. Clean up litter from your neighborhood on Earth Day
8. Sing a clean-up song while picking up. Make one up to your favorite tune.  When you begin to sing, it is the cue that clean up starts.  Some people have used a bell with success
9. Be very clear about what you expect.  'Clean up your toys' is vague. 'Put the blocks in the drawer' is more clear  
10. Remind your child that cleaning up is something we all do, draw attention to your own chores

I came to science, art, and craft project writing, not through any special courses or degrees in college, but through our four children. In 1987 I got a job writing the Mudpies column for Seattle’s Child magazine.

The ages of the children at that time ranged from 2 to 8 years old, and they were my testing ground for every activity. The sheer number of them, and their ages, restricted my range (so many little pairs of hands and restless energy!) but in the end, it worked in my favor. Most of the activities I wrote about were great fun, but very simple. They were so simple, in fact, that the projects required very little adult supervision.

Through this, I discovered that the most successful art and science projects, the ones that children love, that live beyond the time it takes to create, were those that surrendered all stages of the activity to the child. The more I interfered or ‘helped,’ no matter how wonderful the end product, the less interested my children were in doing them. They scattered, refused to participate, sighed and snorted and declared the project boring! The column absorbed these tenets cast by our children. Process is everything.

The column evolved. Books were born. Mudpies sprang from a mother, not a professional, and that is where the heart and soul of my writing lies.