Cleanliness is next to fun?!

I can honestly say that I strongly dislike cleaning our house. I strongly like when our house is clean mind you, but the actual act of cleaning is not high on my list of fun things to do in the day. So I began thinking how can I make this necessary thing that consumes so much of our time as enjoyable as possible and involve Aiden in the process. I suppose this was my creative problem. Here's what I came up with:

The Making Cleaning Fun List
1. Go on a stealth mission to the garbage: Hide behind trees, scamper between cars, sneak along the sidewalk and make a mad dash to the garbage before the bad guys get you, all while singing the mission impossible theme song.
2. Take up indoor duster tobogganing: Put a large duster on the floors and put your little one on top of it, like a toboggan. Pull them around as fast as is safe to clean the floors.
3. Bubble paint the floors: Get a tub of warm, soapy water and sponges. Cover the surface of the floor with soap bubbles and draw in the bubbles with your little person. Give them sponges and paint brushes to paint the floors and move throughout the house as you do this. You'll have clean floors in no time.
4. Play a sock matching game: Unload your cleanly laundered socks onto the floor. Pick out a distinctly patterned or coloured sock and have your little person find the matching sock from the pile. Repeat until all the socks are matched and folded.
5. Set up a sweeping slalom course: Place various items, like toys and chairs and empty cereal boxes, throughout the area that needs sweeping. Give your little one a broom or brush and a ball that they need to sweep through the course. Show them how to go through the course. Clean floors here we come!
6. Have a dirty laundry toss: Put a pile of laundry that needs cleaning on one side of the room and two different coloured laundry baskets on the other side of the room. Designate one colour of laundry basket for whites and one for darks. Give your little one an item of laundry and see if they can toss the laundry into the correct basket. Repeat until all the laundry is sorted for washing.
7. Make blanket caves on the beds: While making beds sit with your little one on the stripped bed and then pull one of the sheets over your head to make a cave.
8. Have a cleaning dance-a-thon :Give your little person kid-sized versions of your cleaning gear and spray bottles filled with water. Turn on some music and dance your faces off while dusting, sweeping, mopping and scrubbing.

Happy cleaning,
Creatively yours,
Maya:)