Fluff the Nest Friday: The ABC Pickup

Around here, Friday is the day to “fluff the nest”, which is just a much cuter way of saying “clean the house”. Am I right? So my Friday posts are all about tidying up and getting the house fresh and in order for the weekend. Some weeks my nest-fluffing comes more easily than others. I need motivation each Friday.

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A while back, I was chatting with some mom friends, and a younger mom asked about chores for her young children. How much is too much or too little to expect from children of various ages? I’ve actually had some posts in mind for this topic, and my friend’s inquiry got me to thinking I should dust those ideas off and go ahead and share them.

I’m certainly no expert on the topic (or ANY parenting topic for that matter!), but when my girls were little, after some trial and error, I did land on some fun and effective ways to get them on board with chores and cleaning. Yes, fun! For what it’s worth, I have three ideas to share over the next few Fridays that have helped us in this area. Today I’ll start with a handy little way to help them clean their bedrooms by themselves no matter how young they are, and no matter how messy it is.

When my girls were little and their bedrooms looked like a tornado had hit, and I would tell them it was time to pick up, they were so overwhelmed by the huge mess, they didn’t know where to even start. So I developed an easy-to-remember way of having them focus on one thing at a time, in an ABC order, until everything was all put away. I called it the “ABC Pickup”. 

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So for my girls, this was their order:

A-animals (stuffed)

B-books

C-clothes & crafts

D– dolls

E-everything else

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And for my son:

A-animals (stuffed)

B– books & blocks

C– cars & clothes

D– dirty socks (because I guarantee he left behind all his dirty socks when he picked up his clothes on “C”. Those dirty socks are a category of their own! He stuffs and hides them everywhere!)

E-everything else

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So, I would say to my child, “Let’s start with A for ANIMALS! Find all your stuffed animals and put them in their basket. Don’t put away anything else but the stuffed animals right now. Come back to me when you’re finished”.

When the child came back I would congratulate her for getting the animals done, and then tell her to move on to B for BOOKS! Only books. Nothing else.

We would continue to go through each letter, one at a time, conquering the pickup in manageable amounts for the child. By the time we got to E for EVERYTHING ELSE, there wasn’t much left but just a couple of odds and ends that were quick to finish up!

If an alphabet letter had more than one item, such as my son’s B for BOOKS & BLOCKS, I would have him do those one at a time (btw, Legos are considered blocks).

 And throughout the whole process, I never had to leave whatever I was working on, but would let the child come back to me for each new letter and some encouragement. The only exception to this was when I was first training them to work through the letters, and would come to their room after each letter to check their work and make sure they were getting everything.

Here are a couple of photos from a day recently when Incredi-Boy this method.

BEFORE:

annnnnd AFTER:

Seriously, he did this ALL on his own! (And even though he’s 8 years old now, this worked when all my kids were much younger too.) All that it needed after his ABC Pickup was for Mom to come in and vacuum! I so wish I had those nice vacuum marks in this photo for y’all. Heehee!