Okay, here’s a great idea for your family.  About a month ago I started to prepare for soccer season.  I coach two of my kids’ teams and came up with a little motivation to get everyone juggling the ball on their own time.  I had such a great response that I started thinking about how people work harder when they are motivated by a contest, including myself.  I love to win at anything, so give me a contest and I will work my hardest to win!

So I realized this may work with the clutter in our home.  I explained to my whole family that we would be having a cleaning contest.  Each member has their own room to clean. We would have one hour to make our room the very cleanest, neatest space in the house. And the winner would be able to pick from a small prize assortment (including choices that bring us together as a family, such as choosing the family event for the evening, like movie or game night.  Or the winner could choose what dessert we would have together.)

That first day I was assigned the kitchen, my husband took our room, my oldest son cleaned his room that he shares with my middle son, while my middle was in charge of the playroom.  And my youngest and only girl was in charge of her room.

The results were amazing!  I’ve been trying for years to get my kids to pick up and in one hour FIVE rooms were better than they had ever been.  Each person was trying to one-up the others so everyone brought their best!  I was even detailing the toaster and lighting candles.  Eric had our room spotless, including suitcases that needed to be unpacked.  Kids rooms were cleaned, beds made, furniture dusted, carpets vacuumed and toys put away.  The bottom line is that the intrinsic desire to WIN made each of us work harder and more efficiently than we could have dreamed.

Now we have these contests every weekend.  With a house that is generally way cleaner and more organized our contests now can focus on cleaning out drawers and closets instead of always focusing on whole rooms.  And the prizes are family oriented so I don’t feel like I’m bribing them to clean.

Lastly, I have been impressed with the respect it gives them for how hard it is to keep a clean space clean.  I feel that they are trying harder to pick up and keep our clean house just that….clean!

We are a family of 5 and far from perfect.  So, of course we will have to keep finding methods of organization that will continue to work for us.  But for now, the cleaning contest gives me hope!  Hope that we’re headed in the right direction!

Hope this helps someone out there!!