Game #1- Seven Minutes
The Rules: Set your kitchen timer for 7 minutes. Clean/organize one room until the timer beeps. Then set your timer again and move to a different room. Do this over and over again, repeating rooms if necessary, until you're tired or until your one-year-old points to his diaper and says "eh" and you almost pass out from the smell. Why 7 minutes? Because that was my volleyball number in high school, of course. Duh.
Game #2- Five-Five-Five
The Rules: Starting in a room of your choice, pick up/clean/organize/throw away 5 things. Then go to a different room and do the same thing. Over and over again until you're tired or until a neighbor rings the doorbell and asks you to spend a billion dollars on a candy bar for his lacrosse team.
Game #3- Category Clean
The Rules: Say a category out loud in a fun voice and go pick up everything that belongs in that category. For example, yell "Clothes!!!!!" and put away all the clothes in your house that are currently in the wrong spot. Other possible categories are "Toys!" or "Books!" or "Half-empty Coffee Cups!"
Game #4- Color Clean
The Rules: Put away everything that's black. Now put away everything's that's brown. Now put away everything that's white. Now put away everything that's pink. Catching on? It's a very intellectual game. Most of my games are.
Happy Cleaning/Organizing/Straightening!
What games do you play?
Christy,
ReplyDeleteYou make me laugh everytime I read your blog! I can never play any kind of pick up game because with my 3 I turn around and what I just picked up is back out again!! AHHH!! :) Maybe I should try harder to get them to pick up....Hummmmmmmmm HA!
Jen Clary :)
"Separate." I drop a pile of clothes Susan has washed onto the couch, and quickly select items from the pile. The first child to correctly identify the item's owner wins the point (this also helps me organize clothes I wouldn't otherwise be able to differentiate).
ReplyDeleteSometimes we just have individual clothing pile races, where they dive into the pile and pull out their own things as well.
We play flashlight clean up. I get to hold the flashlight and make up a fun noise and then pick a random item (usually a toy) point the light and the kids scramble to get it. Be aware that husbands do not seem to think this is that fun and you have to be careful that your kiddos don't get over zealous- running around in the dark can be dangerous :) Jennifer
ReplyDeletemy cleaning sounds like if you give a mouse a cookie book . . . . if you are doing the dishes and the dryer buzzer goes off - you go to fold the clothes - then you go to put them away to see that you never put clean sheets on the bed - you go to get clean sheets and see the linen closet needs organizing - then you find a baby toy and put it back into the baby room to smell that the diaper pail needs emptying - while taking out the trash you see you never finished the kitchen and still haven't put sheets on the bed!
ReplyDelete