"Party Blower Pick-Up" Clean Up Trick

Recently I discovered this quick little tip and couldn't resist sharing. It's made some of our bigger clean up jobs a lot of fun!

Big Brother has a tendency to sprawl out when he plays, and by sprawl, I mean from room to room. Little Brother has some days where he empties several bins all at once. So some days it feels like there are toys everywhere! Although Big Brother has in the past been really helpful with cleaning up, lately it's been a little harder, and the novelty of the old "clean up song" has passed.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon this silly little trick, and it's made cleaning up lots of fun! We had a few party blowers laying around and Big Brother kept blowing them. I'll admit, it was driving me crazy, as I was trying to get dinner finished. Finally I told him he could only blow it when he put away a toy. He instantly got to work, happily cleaning up toys while tooting on the party blower. Pretty soon almost everything was put away!


I know that the novelty will eventually wear off, so we save it only for big clean up tasks. For now, he's really excited when I let him know that it's a day we're going to use the party blowers for pick up time.

I'd love to hear from you, what tricks do you have for getting kids to help clean up?