The Pile

If the downstairs is messy when I get home, I usually push everything into a huge pile for the kids to clean up. The kids have come to dread "the pile" (and Iria has never liked it very much either).

Iria has a much nicer cleanup routine.

She breaks the project down into smaller tasks and makes a game of it, where every kid picks up a number of toys equal to their age and puts them away (counting off as they go along). After that, they rinse and repeat until the room is cleaned up.

Not as fast as making a big pile... but I see the value in her technique :)