My kids know from repetition and a rule in our home. When we clean up or organize, cleaning up means putting everything back in the correct place, not just throwing everything in one box and shoving it in the closet. And the easiest way for me to teach this is when they can’t find something, could be a toy or their shoes… first I answer with “they should be in their location (shoe closet, play room, etc.)” then they tell me it is not there and they can’t find it, so then I explain that this is exactly the reason why things should be put back in their designated location so that you can find it and know where your things are when you need them. And I help them search the entire house for what they’re looking for explaining how difficult it is or how much time it is wasting. Now my older kids ages 6 and 7 understand the importance of cleaning /organizing correctly. The younger ones try their best to follow the rules of cleaning /organizing but still in learning mode. Also, if I ask them to clean /organize and when they finish I will come to check that it was organized properly… and I will explain to them, “this toy doesn’t belong in this box, it belongs here, if you do not organize correctly the first time than we have to re-do the organizing and it takes longer”.
This being said in our home, everything has its place. The play room is organized by themed boxes for instance: Blippi toy box, magnetic tiles boxes, avengers box, barbie box, baby doll box, puzzle box, potato head box, little people box, toy cars, music toy box, toy kitchen box… and so forth. Then everything is stored away and the kids will take out the box they want to play with and hopefully return everything to the same box, put it away before taking another box of toys to play with. I try to stress this but of course I also let kids be kids, sometimes we have multiple boxes out and open. I do have 4 kids. And things get mixed up. But it is not hard to keep organized, we just start with one theme at a time. Grab the barbie box and ask everyone to find anything that belongs to Barbie and put it in, close it, put it away, next theme…
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