How to Get Kids to Pickup After Themselves-regularly

When will this stop? When they move out and have places of their own. Keep reminding but don't think it's going to end anytime soon.

Actually, my 9 year old is starting to get it. It is a hit and miss, but sometimes she does it on her own. Just keep reminding them. Before you know it, they may be saying, "Ugh! I sound like my mother".

They don't. You just keep reminding. Husbands are like that too...

Uh...

Your 9 and 7 year old kids clean their rooms, make their beds, help clean house, and rush to correct mistakes when you point them out.

Go hug your kids, they are awesome.

Let me know if you figure it out. My husband is 54 years old and 22 years of nagging/reminding have done nothing to change HIM :-(
Really though, only women/moms care about this stuff, ya know? So it's kind of our cross to bear...or not.
Let it go...let it goooo!!!

This sounds so stupid, but it worked for us. You take away the PB. I have a shelf in our panty of items the kids have left out. If they don't put it back, they lose it (obviously you cant do this with milk). But they start to get it after awhile. Next time she goes to get the PB and can't find it then she will start to put it away so she doesn't lose it. Good luck.

Meh. I kind of pick my battles, I guess.
A good kid is a good kid.
If they do what they're supposed to, is putting the peanut butter jar back such a big deal?
I agree: Go hug your kids!

LOL Doris Day!

I saw this on some other site:

Get a good sized bin - plastic Rubbermaid bin, or one of those galvanized things people use as summer ice buckets for bottles of beer, anything that sort of fits with your decor. Low and open is better than tall and narrow where too much is on the bottom. Make some strips of heavy cardboard, or get some of the large size wooden sticks (like tongue depressors) at the craft store. Write a chore on every strip with a sharpie. These are extra chores, not their regular ones. Every time you find something out of place (except food is a problem!), the item goes in the bucket: shoes, lunch boxes, homework, the peanut butter jar that doesn't need refrigeration, balls, hair clips, etc. The chore strips are put in a heavy envelope that is taped to the outside. Put instructions or a little poem up that says if they want the thing back, they have to do a job. This gives them control in that they can choose a particular job, but not whether or not they have to do something to earn it back.

Here's the hard part: stop reminding them. Give them a few weeks to get the hang of it. If they can't find a shoe, you can say, "Well, maybe it's in the chore bucket" over the first few weeks, but after that, just say, "Gee I don't know. You'd better start looking." And walk away - disengage. Once they have to go to school with the "wrong" shoes, or they can't go outside to play because the boots and mittens are in the bucket, or (and I'm not kidding here) they have to go to school without their completed homework, they'll learn. Actions have consequences. The trick for you is not to yell or nag, but to let them see that the consequence is by their own choosing, not your "nastiness"!

Make sure that the chore list you have is reasonable for kids their age.Young kids should not have 2 hours of chores every day. And somethings are beyond them right now. But it won't take them as long to clean the house if there isn't as much stuff lying around.

Google "kids' chore bucket" and you'll see some photos https://www.google.com/search?q=kids'+chore+bucket&am...

If they have regular chores and help clean the house and make their beds, sounds like that is a lot for their ages. With homework and just being a kid, it's a lot. I'd just keep reminding them. Being a mother is exhausting and they're already doing more than I did at their ages. Then I got older and naturally did stuff like put my stuff away. But my husband doesn't as Doris said and he was raised with more chores than me. Some people are just neat naturally.

I distinctly remember a teenage argument with my dad about this kind of stuff. His pet peeve was that I forgot to turn out lights when I left the room. The argument went something like this:

Dad: some long lecture about electricity bills and leaving on lights and why couldn't I just remember to do this, he's tired of telling me over and over again, etc.
Me: I get good grades, come home before curfew, help with chores without complaining. Yes, I forget to turn out lights. It's not on purpose, I just forget. But maybe I should start failing classes, breaking curfew, and refusing to do my chores. Then maybe you'll leave me alone about lights!

(I think it resulted in me getting sent to my room for talking back, but he did lay off about the lights a little bit LOL)

Now, as a parent, I try to pick important battles and let the little stuff go. To me, what you are describing is little stuff.

omg, i so remember the frustration of this. and my also very nice and generally agreeable boys would look at me in mystification and go 'well, just say something, mom, we'll do it' and i'd leap about the room, tearing my hair and shrieking 'I DON'T WANT TO KEEP SAYING SOMETHING! WHY CAN'T YOU PEOPLE EVER EVER EVER JUST DO IT WITHOUT ME SAYING SOMETHING???????'
i have no help for you.
if you have good kids, and it sounds like you, and they clean their rooms and help clean the house every week, you're ahead of my curve. i suggest you scream into a pillow periodically, and remember they'll be gone before you know it and you'll be missing that spoon of hard-crusted peanut butter on the counter.
:) khairete
S.

Does that ever happen?

Honestly, we all have our pet peeves, and that won't change. My husband and kids leave out condiments all the time. It drives me up a wall, but I just put it away. I don't have the fight in me for the small stuff.

When their own apartment starts smelling and their friends won't come over anymore...lol.

We use a ticket system in our house. Each week the kids (ages 5 and 6) get a set of 10 tickets (raffle style - I got them at Office Max). Every time they do not complete a chore, or they leave something out that I wind up cleaning up,. they lose a ticket. The tickets have a value on them (25 tickets is 30 minutes of ipad time, 35 tickets is a new small toy, 50 tickets is a toy of their choice - we sat down as a family and decided the value of the tickets). They know that if I have to pick up after them, they will lose a ticket, which are kept in the command center of our kitchen by the family calendar. The first couple of times they complained that I didn't remind them, but they figured out pretty quickly it was their responsibility. I got so tired of nagging them to clean up after themselves. We also have tickets for myself and my husband, the kids would complain that he left his shoes int he hallway rather than putting them away, so we started that to be more "fair". We have been using this system since last summer, and at first they kept around 3 tickets a week, or less, but now they usually have 8 or so tickets left at the end of each week.

Consistent expectations and repetition.

The privilege of using the kitchen comes with the expectation that it will be left in the same condition it was found. Kids make lunch, the expectation is that the kitchen will be left in that specific condition before they are allowed to go on to the next activity. Sorry, no TV, playing, or anything else until you've completed your use of the kitchen.

I've gone into the family room and paused the TV or a game, or interrupted play. "Excuse me, can you please go finish in the kitchen? It doesn't look the way we usually keep it. Thank you."

Eventually, they'll figure out that their play will be interrupted far less if they take care of it right away.

One of my pet peeves is a knife with peanut butter all over it. Gah.

I put all of the stuff left around on top of my sons drawings or his bed. I make sure not to mess them up, but he gets the point. Don't leave stuff around where it doesn't belong. If you ise something of value to them, they get the picture a lot faster.

Sometimes I simply state, "DD, your light is on in your room." Then she goes "OH!" and runs back to do it. If it's things like toys out or clothe on the floor, try a list. Or if you've said it eleven million times, and YOU pick it up, put it where they can't find it. Then when they ask, tell them that you reminded them to pick it up and now they need to earn it back. Or get them involved. "DD, it really bothers me when I have to remind you to put things back. How can we help you remember?"

Though I hate to say my college aged SD still tends to leave food in her room and I can't tell you what we found in there once or twice....ew.