Latest / JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain / 265: Little Jolt of Joy - Turn Chores into Play: 3 Game-Based Cleaning Hacks for Kids

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265: Little Jolt of Joy - Turn Chores into Play: 3 Game-Based Cleaning Hacks for Kids · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  Happy Friday. Today is going to be a short and sweet little jolt of joy.
• 0:05
  The reason I'm coming on is twofold. One, if you happen to listen to the last
• 0:12
  episode, which I think is 264,
• 0:15
  you heard that I'm launching a little six-week summertime sampler series.
• 0:23
  For $10, you get all of June, July, and August, and every other week.
• 0:29
  So it lasts 12 weeks, but we're only going to be active six of those weeks,
• 0:33
  where we're sampling different types of organizing and decluttering and,
• 0:37
  you know, projects and challenges.
• 0:40
  And if you just want something light and easy for the summer that you can sort
• 0:43
  of dabble in and out of and experience it in its own very small private Facebook
• 0:48
  group where you You don't have to feel like the new one amongst a bunch of people
• 0:52
  who have done things with me before.
• 0:54
  This is new for all of us this summer. It's something I'm just trying out,
• 0:59
  trying a new format. I put my normal membership on freeze for the summer,
• 1:03
  and I wanted to give this a try.
• 1:06
  Just, I think we're having some fun in there so far.
• 1:08
  But I didn't want you to feel like it was too late.
• 1:12
  This first week has hit some hiccups, as all new learning things do.
• 1:16
  So I'm going to do a repeat of week one next week and, you know,
• 1:23
  Call it a mulligan, call it a do-over, call it a second chance because we all need those.
• 1:29
  But if it was something you were like, oh, I would have done that,
• 1:32
  but I missed it. It's not too late.
• 1:34
  You can still go over to joylovinghome.myflowdesk.com slash summer.
• 1:45
  I'll put the link in the show notes as well. But you'll be able to read all
• 1:50
  about, you know, which dates are the active weeks, what we're doing,
• 1:54
  what to look forward to, that kind of thing, if you go to that link.
• 1:57
  All right. So this isn't just a podcast commercial.
• 2:02
  I'm going to share the other thing I wanted to talk about, which is being able
• 2:07
  to sprinkle in some gamifying of your cleaning, particularly for your kids, if you have kids at home.
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  But I think you can have fun with them with this. the very important key to
• 2:18
  what you're about to hear is that you need to make sure you're gamifying your
• 2:23
  cleaning and you're not cleanifying your game time.
• 2:28
  So don't tell the kids you're going to play a game and then suddenly turn it into cleaning.
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  Tell the kids you're going to clean, but say, hey, but let's do it a little
• 2:36
  differently today and have some fun with it. And that will make the difference.
• 2:40
  So what I did is I just took three popular games.
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  So you'll have to adjust the up or down based on your kids' ages,
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  or if you have favorite games, maybe this will spark an idea,
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  and you can gamify cleaning with some other games that you might have.
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  I would love to hear your thoughts if you give this a try, because,
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  Full disclosure, these are not tested. These are just ideas.
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  I would love to hear the results. You can always reach out to me either on my
• 3:11
  Instagram, which is at joylovinghome, or you can email me joy at joylovinghome.com.
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  Either way, I would love to hear thoughts on your own ideas or thoughts on how
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  this worked if you gave it a try.
• 3:25
  Okay, so three ideas. number one is you play go fish with them.
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  But what you do is instead of saying, do you have any octopi?
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  I was trying to think one of the fish on the fish cards. Could not think of one.
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  Anyway, you say something like, can you find three dirty socks in your room?
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  And if they can do it, then they win the card. So you get to name,
• 3:56
  quote unquote, what the sock is.
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  Like, so, or what the sock is, what the fish is.
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  And they can do the same with you where you get to be their helper.
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  Like they can say, can you find, you know.
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  Four stuffed animals in the wrong place. Whatever. The fish one's the hardest
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  one, which is why I started with it. So hopefully these ideas get better as they go.
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  So anyway, play around with a go fish style format. You can still have the cards
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  out. You can still use the cards.
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  If you want to go above and beyond one night after they're in bed,
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  you could actually think of all kinds of categories and actually like put post-it
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  notes over top of the fish so they have to say that word.
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  But anyway, just some thoughts.
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  All right. Second one is playing Uno.
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  So to play the Uno, I want you to designate a color for a room.
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  So in Uno, there's red, green, blue, and yellow.
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  So that can be bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, playroom.
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  And you all designate what the color is ahead of time.
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  And then how it's going to work is you play like normal Uno,
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  but when you put your card down.
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  The person who has to lay the next card
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  has to pick up four items in that
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  color designated room before they get to go put their
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  card down so for instance somebody puts a three of red a red three down they
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  have to go to what you designated as the red room and tidy somehow three items
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  in that room and then they can run back and put their blue threat three down
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  and whoever's turn it is next has to go to the kitchen and, you know,
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  wipe down three little spots or take three things to the sink or whatever,
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  empty three things out of the dishwasher, whatever the case may be. So each color...
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  Represents a room. If you hit a skip, it means that kid didn't have to do that
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  one. They got skipped over.
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  If you hit a reverse, it means the person on the other side has to do it.
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  If you hit a draw two or anything like that, then they'll have to have two more cards.
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  All the rest of you know is getting played similarly.
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  If you hit a wild, then you can designate something that's in a room that you all didn't name.
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  So wild card, we now talk about the entryway or something in the mud room or
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  whatever the case may be.
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  You can have a wild, wild rooms for your wild cards.
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  So I think I've hit all the cards there, but that can be a fun way to sort of
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  gamify a, you know, one round of cleaning. That way you're not worried about setting the timer.
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  It lasts as long as it lasts. And then when it's over, it's over.
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  It might take a while though, because jumping up and down is going to get a
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  lot of steps in too, which is not the worst thing in the world.
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  Okay, and then the final one is you can play Candyland. But the color part on
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  this is, let's say, you know, they roll the dice, you're moving your little
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  person, and you land on a pink.
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  You have to run around the house and find a pink item to put away.
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  And then you roll the dice, somebody lands on a blue, you have to run around
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  the house and find a blue item to put away.
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  It's more obscure, but things are still getting put away. You know,
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  you're still doing the things. So give it a go.
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  This was just short and sweet. Three ideas. If you guys come up with a fun way
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  to put a twist on a game that will make cleaning more fun, just again,
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  remember, gamify your cleaning.
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  Don't cleanify your game time. All right.
• 7:25
  I hope you guys are having the happiest Friday and have a lovely weekend.
• 7:29
  Until next time, continue to choose joy.