One of my favorite childhood movies is Mary Poppins. I thought her magic was so amazing. Who wouldn't want an adult around who made the room clean itself with just a snap of her fingers? Too bad I can't make that happen in real life! My preschooler loves to have everything - and I mean everything - out of its box, basket, or case so he can spread it out to play. To make matters worse, my husband is an enabler by creating elaborate scenes in the living room with all of Kellan's toys!

  Kellan used to be better about cleaning up when we asked, but lately he gets genuinely upset when we tell him it's time to clean up. He yells, "I'm still playing with that!" even though he stopped playing with something hours ago. Our old clean-up games aren't working anymore. Now I just threaten to throw things away before I finally get him to pick up.

One sneaky thing I've been doing is storing away some of his toys when he's asleep.  We've always tried to keep toys from overwhelming our house, but after a birthday and a couple of visits with grandparents, there is more stuff to contend with! So I'm slowly whittling away the amount of toys we actually have in the house. I'm trying to see how far I can go without him noticing a real decrease in toys.

Something else I'm going to try is putting on special "clean up" music to make the process more fun. Kellan loves dancing so maybe cleaning with fun music playing will be entertaining for all of us. When I have big cleaning jobs, I put on my headphones and get busy with old school funk or 80's tunes. Kellan loves the Beatle's White Album (no joke) when we're in the car, so maybe I should play it during clean up time.