Because sometimes every room looks like this! Even though the cleaning lady has been coming every week, and theoretically her cleaning the downstairs is supposed to mean I have more time to keep things organized and keep up after the children and their chores.
None of us are very good at picking up after ourselves, so things pile up and cleaning can’t happen.
That’s when I do this:
and call everyone in for evening jobs.
Everyone works on the same room. ?They do their assigned job, then pitch in on someone else job until the room is done and we can all move on to the next room.
I sweep up the piles on the floor, of anything that is on the floor so someone can put it away. I do some cleaning up myself but I also do a fair bit of keeping everyone moving.
Something like this:
“That’s trash, throw it away.”
“Does that have a home? Find it a home or throw it out.”
“Run and dump the trash can and run back! This is a time to bustle not dawdle.”
“We can’t keep everything. This has been on your floor for three weeks and you haven’t missed it, now it’s time to throw it out.”
“Crawl under the bed and get everything out.”
“Why are there so many dirty socks.”
“Hurry! Hurry! We are doing a house blitz!”
“You can organize ?the bookshelf later, right now just get the books back on it!”
Not a perfect job by any stretch but in about an hour and a half we can get six or so rooms into decent shape- clean enough that they can stay that way with regular tidying.