5 Tips for Getting Your House Clean While Home Alone with a Preschooler...Without Resorting to TV!

Numero uno:  Pull out the paint set.  In the kitchen.  Reiterate the "no paint anywhere but on paper or canvas" rule, perhaps 17 times.  Only after child can recite the "no paint anywhere but on paper or canvas" rule, do you actually give the child paints and paint brushes.  Load dishwasher, sweep floors, start a load of laundry, all while checking back in with child every 5 minutes.  Provide more blank paper and/or canvas every 5 minutes or so.  Also, keep reiterating the "no paint anywhere but on paper or canvas" rule.

Numero dos:  Find a box of toys you were thinking of donating to Goodwill because they'd been in the back of the closet for so long that you'd forgotten they existed.  Put said box of toys on the rug in the living room.  Introduce your child to this amazing and cool toy.  This should buy you perhaps fifteen minutes to fold some laundry and vacuum a room or two.

Numero tres:  If you happen to have any type of refrigerated cookie dough in the house, break it out.  Supply your child with cookie sheets, and ask them to make "tiny" balls of dough for each cookie.  While they are scooping, shaping, and placing cookie dough onto the sheets, you may possibly have time to unload the dishwasher, wipe the counters, or even clean out the fridge.

Numero cuatro:  Play dough.  In the kitchen.  With real cooking tools.  Maybe a garlic press?  Maybe a lemon juicer?  Maybe a melon baller?  Maybe a potato ricer?  There's something about real kitchen tools that makes them so exciting for preschoolers.  I've also found that throwing in some real birthday candles (no matches, though!!) can help extend the independent-play-life of the activity. 

Numero cinco:  The natives are getting restless.  You must pull out the big guns.  Search in your closet for an old shoebox.  Scrounge up some pipe cleaners and tape.  Bring out the paints yet again.   Yes, you know what I'm going to suggest...Let your child try to make their very first diorama.  May I suggest a pond or a farm?  This might perhaps provide you with enough time to dust and declutter one room.  (I recommend telling your preschooler to save anything they can't get to stand up for the end, when you will come in and be the tape-master extraordinaire.)

And there you have it.  Five tips for getting your house clean without having to resort to putting the preschooler in front of the TV.  (And here I must admit that having a friend take your child to the museum for a few hours on a Saturday also works wonders!)


How have you kept your children occupied in creative independent play when you're super busy?  Ideas are greatly appreciated!

Embrace the Process

This weekend, we cleaned house. We organized and sorted and decluttered.

There was a part of me that just wished I had a whole weekend to myself to get the job done. But I made a point to involve Flanna in the process, to give her little tasks to do along the way, so that she could feel a part of the pride once everything was clean. She folded a bit of laundry, picked up crayons, cleaned up blocks, and, yes, she also made quite a few messes during the process, too! (One of my friends on Facebook wrote recently that cleaning up the house when you have kids is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. I find that to be pretty accurate!) But it was kind of fun to listen to music together while buzzing around the apartment. And what a treat to have some clutter cleared away!

One of the best times I had this weekend was this morning, when Flanna woke scarily early at 6 a.m., and instead of turning the TV on so she could watch cartoons (which was my first instinct at that early hour!), I decided that we were going to make french toast together. I let her crack the eggs and stir, and she did a really nice job. Yes, it took me probably four times as long to make breakfast with my little helper than it would've had I done it on my own. But I'm trying to embrace the process a bit more these days. And it was pretty rewarding to see her get better at cracking the eggs each time she tried.




What goal are you working toward right now? How can you embrace the process and find fun along the way as you work toward that goal?


By the way, speaking of processes, Flannery is currently obsessed with the life cycle of birds. She pretends every ball we own is an egg ready to hatch a baby chick any minute. This morning, she drew, "a mommy chicken who laid an egg, then the baby pecks the egg with its beak, then the baby chick hatches out of the egg." She drew this all on her own, and I just loved how she made the little beak and wings and feet of the birds. Check out her picture above. What an artist!