FREE Printable - Get your Toddler/Preschooler to Clean their Room

If you have young kids, I'm sure you have heard all of the excuses:

"I don't know how to"
"It is clean"
"I cleaned it yesterday"
"But my legs are breaking" (This is Jocelyn's personal favorite)

      One day, in a desperate attempt to get Jocelyn to clean her room, I came up with an idea. I took a piece of paper, divided it into 8 sections, then started drawing pictures of items that made up most of the mess. The first section I drew a shirt and pants to represent dirty clothes, in the second section I drew a teddy bear to represent stuffed animals, and so on, and so on. In the last section I wrote "everything else." I explained to her what each picture was (mainly because I'm terrible at drawing) then I explained that she had to pick up all of the stuff in the first section (dirty clothes) only and put them were they belong. Once she was done with the first section she would get a sticker to place over that section. Then she would move onto the second section.
      After I explained this to Jocelyn, something amazing happened. She cleaned her entire room without any help from me!!! I was actually quite shocked that something so simple was all it took. Dividing the job up onto smaller sections made things a lot easier than looking at the mess as a whole.
      We have since then, upgraded from ~~scribbles~~ drawings on paper to a pretty printable I made.
I know not all of you will be able to use this since your child may have different toys, but I hope it will help out some of you or at least give you an idea to make your own.

Click HERE to print your own copy

To save on paper I usually peel the stickers off (the ones I have peel off pretty easily) when she is done so we can reuse it the next day. She has never asked to see the paper after she hands it to me so this works for us. You could also place the paper in a plastic sleeve and let your child draw X's over each section with a dry erase marker.