Family Cleaning Raffle

I know we live in a world where "Pardon the Mess, We're Making Memories Here" is the current mantra, but our family doesn't live by those same principles. We do live in our house, we do homeschool in our house, we do make memories in our house; but we clean up after ourselves too. Our house is way too small with a whole bunch of people living in it, letting it stay filthy and unorganized just isn't an option. Further more, I just believe, we as a family, are way more productive and healthier when our house is clean and organized. 

I have shared much of our cleaning and organizing routines in previous posts, but today I'd like to share a fun way we do a 'crash deep cleaning' around the holidays. My preferred way to keep our house cleaned and organized is to schedule 'deep cleaning' tasks weekly, throughout the year. This way we're constantly cleaning or organizing something in small spurts as opposed to a non-stop week or month of intense cleaning. 

But hey, sometimes we all get behind and there's 'not-your-every-day cleaning' that needs to be done. A couple times a year I typically find myself in these straights ~ which is why I created a Family Cleaning Raffle. A family cleaning raffle is a fun way to get everyone involved in a swift deep cleaning and organization of your home. 

Cleaning and organizing has always been a family affair for us, so thankfully a cleaning raffle isn't something my kiddos snub their noses at; but I can understand if some children may not be on board as much. To help spur my children on to finished their cleaning raffle jobs I often include a family reward for everyone once all the jobs have been completed. For this year's holiday cleaning raffle reward we had a family movie night with hot cocoa.

To do our cleaning raffle, I make a list of all the cleaning and organizing jobs that need to be done and I write them on strips of paper. I use two different colors of paper; one color for the older children and another for the younger kiddos. Everyone can work no matter the age, the jobs just need to be age appropriate. Usually the younger ones find the cleaning raffle more 'fun' than the big kids anyways, lol.

I put all the slips of paper with the tasks on them folded up inside a jar and we pass the jar around. Everyone takes a slip and then gets to work. This year we had enough jobs that the jar was passed around twice and each person had two specific jobs to complete. As the children complete their tasks, I go around and check to make sure they were done correctly. 

I also have my own 'big' jobs that I do while the kids are working on theirs. This year I scrubbed the outside of all our kitchen cabinets and oiled them as well as scrubbed our interior doors. This year I was blessed with my husband being at home and he helped in multiple different areas, cleaning and organizing. It's always nice to have an extra adult available.

Thankfully, we've raised our children up from a very young age to help with cleaning and they don't give me grief when it comes time for deep cleaning or any cleaning for that matter. We have a lot of family sayings, but one most frequently used is: "It takes a family to run a family and family's name is NOT Mom and Dad". This reigns true for all areas of our life including cleaning and organizing. 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer