Spring Cleaning for Kids

As winter begins to melt away and the warmth of spring spills in, many people feel a need to refresh their homes and engage in a beloved act known as spring cleaning. However, kids are notoriously antagonistic to chores and can be worse than herding cats when trying to get them to help you with a project like this. That’s why spring cleaning with kids has to be an affair that is as fun, and enduring, as possible.

One way to do that is to make the entire event a party. Get the whole family involved, order pizza, maybe even ice cream, play some loud music and do the whole thing up Mary Poppins dance party style. You may not enjoy cleaning either, but if you make it seem like fun, then they, and you, will start having fun.

Gamification can be another great tool for getting your kids involved with spring cleaning. If you have multiple kids, make it a competition for who can get their room the cleanest. Or make a chore list and see who can knock off more of them in a given day. You can even have prizes, or a points system that can earn them rewards.

Furniture is another, often overlooked part of spring cleaning. Sometimes you can spruce up an old bed or dresser, or even have them refinished, but at some point it might be time to go shopping. When looking at kids furniture you will want to involve them in the process. You have to assess both their functional size needs as well as their likes and dislikes. In that way you can ensure that you get a piece that they will feel attached to.

One of the most difficult things you will have to do when spring cleaning with a kid is to weed through their toys and possessions and choose which ones need to be donated or thrown away. You can of course do this covertly, but it is better to teach the child why that is necessary with compassion and love. This can be done with the old method of keeping an archive box.



What you do is go through everything and make a pile of things that you think they have outgrown, or worn out. You’ll probably want to keep a memento or two but this is in general. Then you tell them they can choose one thing to keep for everything that goes in the box. You can inform them that the box will be put in a closet for six months and then anything they want back they can have, in exchange for another toy. After that the box gets taken out and the process starts over next year.. This can teach them both agency and responsibility with their

Spring cleaning shouldn’t end when it ends. While you work your way through your kids room use an organizational strategy that will help them to keep it clean over the long term. Make sure that storage is simple, color coded, and fun. You can have basketball hampers, and storage chests that look like wrapped birthday presents. The more that you can subtly incentivize them to keep their spaces tidy the less you’ll have to do next spring cleaning.