How To Clean With a Three Year Old

I had a breakthrough today. We were finally home for a whole Saturday and we decided to do some "fall cleaning" (since we missed spring cleaning this year). So my husband and I were frantically trying to clean everything and everywhere in the kitchen and living room while our 3 year old was obviously in need of attention. He didn't want to play games by himself. He didn't want to look at books by himself. He was getting pretty grumpy when a light bulb went off in my head: We want to clean. He just wants to do stuff with US! Why not have him help?

We looked around and found an old spray bottle that had only been used for water. I filled it up with some fresh water and told him it was his "cleaning spray". Then I got my own bottle of (real) cleaning spray. We each got a rag. And we went to work on the kitchen island. I couldn't believe how much he was into it! He sprayed the shit out of that thing with his "cleaning spray"! And he wiped everywhere. I realized there were some nooks and crannies that the rags would not get to, and I hesitated, but then decided to go for it- we pulled the CLEANING toothbrushes out from under the sink and used them to clean the nooks and crannies. We each got our own CLEANING toothbrush, and while we did this I talked to him about the important difference between the CLEANING toothbrushes and the TEETH toothbrushes.

I might not have risked this except for the fact that he had already discovered the under-the-kitchen-sink toothbrushes a few weeks ago, when my husband came out of the bathroom holding two toothbrushes and asking me why I had so many in the toothbrush holder. I had no idea what he was talking about and after a few questions to the kid, we discovered that he had opened the under-the-sink cabinet and saw two toothbrushes, so took them immediately to the bathroom sink and plopped them into the toothbrush holder! How could you possibly get mad about a thing like that?

Anyway, I'm pleased to announce that I now have a new cleaning buddy and hopefully we will be able to make family clean-up days a bit less stressful with the whole family involved. Until he's old enough to realize that Hey! Cleaning sucks.