Encouraging Your Toddler to Clean Up
Do your kids pick up their toys when they’re done playing with them? This concept of cleaning up after ourselves is a life skill that every person should learn. As soon as kids are old enough to crawl, they can start putting their toys back after they’re done with them.
If you’re struggling with the toddler years and enjoy a clean home, then continue reading for some tips on how to encourage your toddler to clean up.
Create a Place for Everything
The first step to ensuring your toddler put things away is to create a place for everything. You should have a bookcase for books, a toy box for toys, and other locations for smaller toys. Each item in the home should have its own ‘home’, a location where it belongs.
You’ll show your toddler where each of their toys and books belongs so that they pick up their toys every single time. Be sure to have the place for each item within reaching distance of your kid to encourage your toddler to clean up.
Cleanup Together
One of the best ways to get kids to pick up their toys and other items is to model this behavior. Don’t wait until nap time to clean the home. Have your toddler involved with household clean up so that they start to see picking up things is a natural part of everyday life.
You can make this process fun for your toddler by having music on, making it a competition to see who can pick up things the quickest, or encourage your toddler to clean up in their own unique way. This will make picking up toys a fun process so that your toddler will be encouraged to pick up their things whenever they’re done with playtime.
Take Note of Toddler’s Mood
While your toddler is enjoying indoor playtime they may be happy at first but eventually, you’ll see their mood shift. Don’t expect your toddler to pick up toys when they’re overstimulated or overtired. Keep a watchful eye on your toddler’s mood so you can have them clean up before they get too unruly.
Another parenting tip is that you shouldn’t interrupt your toddler to stop what they’re doing and clean up if they’re not quite done with their current project. If your toddler is in the middle of coloring, playing or some other activities provide them with a five-minute warning that clean up time is nearing.
There are some tools that parents use to help a toddler recognize the time has arrived for picking up their things. You can use an egg timer to ding in five minutes after giving your toddler a five-minute warning that clean up time is arriving. Giving your toddler a visual or noise-maker signal when you want them to switch gears will help your toddler develop a natural routine for picking up their toys.