House De-clutter: Toy Jail

If you are like me, during the work week, it is very easy for the house to fall apart. Apart from teaching, I work the after school drama program which can take up to 12 hours out of my week. Then I have to grade. And still parent. It can get exhausting. Cleaning my house isn’t always the priority and so I have had to be creative with making my daughters help with cleaning. They already have a chore chart (which you will hear about soon) but that didn’t help with picking up their toys outside of their rooms. In fact, they realized that if the toys were out of their room, their rooms weren’t so hard to clean. They started to play at the kitchen table or in the living room and leave their toys for, guess who, mommy to clean up.

Not to be outsmarted by my 6 year old twins, I remembered seeing where another person was using a “Toy Jail.” The concept being, when toys are left where they don’t belong, they end up in jail. In order for the kids to get the toys out of jail, they have to do a chore to earn it. You can search Pinterest for a plethora of ideas for this. I didn’t really feel like doing the search so I don’t have a cute rhyme, but it gets the point across to my kids.

I am all about getting my kids to be more responsible and helping out around the house. The more responsibility they have around the house, the less I have to do at the end of the day.

Here is what you need:

·         Plastic bin

·         Popsicle sticks

·         Envelope

I used dafont.com to find a cute font for writing out the instructions. I wanted to keep it cute but easy to read for the girls. I kept it pretty simple with the following text:

Toy Jail

To get us out of jail,

you must complete one

chore from the envelope.

Give the popsicle stick

to mom when done.

I have linked the file for the text When deciding on the chores, I referenced their chore chart they already follow and came up with a few more. If you are not sure which chores the kiddos can do, you can search out some age appropriate lists on-line. When I began to look at implementing chores for the girls, I turned to an article from focusonthefamily.com (see sources at the end of the page). Here some ideas though to get you started.

Age	Chore
4 – 5	·         Sort laundry into colors ·         Feed and water animals ·         Match socks ·         Help load dishwasher ·         Wipe tables and chairs ·         Put toys in bedroom away
6 – 7	·         Vacuum bedroom ·         Sweep hard floors ·         Put laundry away ·         Empty trash (I have my girls empty the bathroom trash into the larger bags as the larger bags are too heavy for them) ·         Wash dishes (I worry about my girls breaking things – they are as graceful as their momma – so they only do the plastics) ·         Load laundry (some sources say to do this at an older age, but the use of gel packs for soap make it easy for them do) ·         Wipe vanities
8 – 9	·         Rake yard ·         Fold laundry (Some sources say to do this at a younger age, but I am picky and want folding to be neat and tight. Younger ages don’t seem to be able to do this as neatly as I would like.) ·         Take trash to the curb ·         Do all dishes ·         Help prepare meals ·         Mop floors

Any older than 9 years old, you will probably have to resort to taking away privileges such as technology (iPads, tablets, smart phones, TV). Most 9 year olds are going to be more responsible for their own belongs and probably won’t be leaving toys out as much as when they were younger.

Another reason I like using “Toy Jail” is that the girls are doing additional chores without the girls earning money. I know, I’m cheap, but they earn money through doing their regular chores. If they aren’t getting toys out of jail, they can complete the additional chores for more money. 

Source:

https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/parenting-challenges/motivating-kids-to-clean-up/age-appropriate-chores?gclid=CjwKCAiA-KzSBRAnEiwAkmQ157kCSA0P6mzbFDloFhITXutAlmPbZx3nUItd3ZPrT1ZCm6uFThauQRoCNaQQAvD_BwE