Thursday, March 3, 2011

Creative Clean-Up

What kind of mother allows her children to play in packing peanuts and make a ginormous mess? Me!?!

I received a package in the mail the other day and it was full of packing peanuts. The kids could not resist getting their little hands in the box. I tried to be responsible and said, "keep the 'snow' (what my kids call packing peanuts) in the box." Funny thing is we had just come in from playing in the snow. Before I knew it, the entire box was empty and our entryway was a disaster.

My heart began to beat faster, as I am not one who likes messes and I began to feel overwhelmed and down-right grumpy. It was time to fix dinner, give the kids baths and get ready for bed, now I had one more thing to do on my list of night time chores. I remembered a trick I had used early this month to get the kids to pick up small counting bears they had scattered on floor. Clean them up with dump trucks. Perfect! The kids could still play while helping to clean up too. Genius!

So I equipped them with several dump trucks, shovels, and a little bucket and the kids happily when to town.
How do so many peanuts get in one box?
I was able to fix dinner while the kids played and cleaned up. They tried to beat the timer for dinner. Voila! A clean floor and two happy children.
Tip of the Day: Get creative with kids to encourage them to clean up. Use toys, have races, pretend. Sometimes my daughter will pretend she is Cinderella and I am the evil step mother. Hey, whatever it takes to get the job done.
~Amy

2 comments:

Tresa Black said...

You are the BEST mom evah!

Amy Gehring said...

Oh my gosh! Good for you for keeping your cool. I don't know that I could have done that! But look at their faces - they are too cute! :O)