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There is nothing as horrible as constantly nagging your kids to clean up! And if you kids are anything like mine, the more you ask, the less they do! It can get so frustrating to find a Good cleanup routine for young kids!
But I really love having a clean house. (I have a few fun cleaning games for moms to make it more bearable to constantly be cleaning!) I also think it’s really important to teach kids while they’re young how to clean. So how do we do both of these things without wanting to pull our hair out everyday?
About a year ago, we had this brilliant idea to start doing a clean up timer with our kids. To choose the same time everyday where the main areas in our home were picked up, and their rooms got cleaned with what they played with that day.
We had gotten to the point where cleaning their rooms was such an ordeal because they didn’t get cleaned up frequently enough. And that was overwhelming for them to see this huge mess they were being asked to clean. And really I didn’t think that was fair to make them do it on their own. So I always ended up helping them clean up their rooms.
It honestly got to be ridiculous that they couldn’t pick up on their own.
We realized that if they cleaned up every day, it would be way easy. Shocking conclusion to come to right? It only took us 7 years?!
Greatest Idea Ever!
So we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we had a timer that went off everyday at the same time? If the kids knew when said timer went off that it was time to clean up?
Insert Amazon’s Alexa.
It was the perfect solution to our cleanup timer idea!
So for Black Friday we took full advantage of their sales on the Echo Dot and put one in each of the kids bedrooms!
We already had an Alexa Hub in our kitchen, so the timer could be heard throughout the whole house!
Our thinking was that if the Alexa was reminding them to cleanup, rather than us, maybe it would be more effective! And it was! Like was more than we thought it would be!
We set the timer to go off at 6:45 shortly after we finished eating dinner every night.
Cleanin' and Jammin'!
And before you think we just had a timer ringing throughout the whole house, let me tell you the best part! The kids knew it was time to cleanup when Alexa started to play music, without anyone telling her to!
That’s right music starts blaring through our house at 6:45 and the kids know that it’s time to cleanup! They start in the family room, and when that’s finished they head up to pick up their bedrooms!
They typically get 3-4 songs, or about 12 minutes to clean up! And once they’re done with their bedrooms they can come down to the family room for a dance party for the remainder of the songs!
They absolutely love it! And they totally clean every night! They are motivated to get to come downstairs and dance before we get ready for bed!
And since they’re cleaning every single day, it’s not getting messy enough to be totally overwhelming! They know that they will have to clean up that night, so they are more careful to not make unnecessary messes!
It seriously has been life changing! We have totally loved it!
Create Playlists in Amazon Music
It did take a little bit of figuring out to get the Alexa routines all figured out! So I thought I would walk you through how we set ours up and save you the hassle!
You do have to have a subscription to Amazon Music, but it’s worth every penny!
Okay so first you have to set up your cleanup playlists on the Amazon Music App. I have different songs for every day of the week, it is a little more tedious, but it makes it more fun! And the kids don’t get sick of the same songs playing over and over everyday! It’s been the BEST way to get kids to clean up!
You will need to download two different Apps to get this to work. Chances are if you have Alexa you already have them both. The first is the Amazon Alexa App, and the second is the Amazon Music App.
Step by Step Instructions:
To begin create a some new playlists in the Amazon Music App. Ours are entitled “Monday Cleanup,” “Tuesday Cleanup” and so on. Open the Amazon Music App > Click on My Music at the bottom > Click on Playlists > Create New Playlist. Enter the name of your playlist and click save. You need to remember the name to create the routine, so don’t make it too crazy!
Then search for some of your favorite songs, and add them to the playlist. Or you can go off the table below of my kids favorites! Spread them throughout the week so that you end up having 3-4 songs each night. If you think your kids may need more time add another song or two!
I find that they actually get done a lot quicker than I expected! When they’re doing it every night, it just stays so much tidier!
Set Up Multi-Room Speakers
Once you have all of your songs put into your playlists through Amazon Music you’re ready to set up your routines through the Amazon Alexa App!
You do have to setup a routine for everyday if you are doing a different playlist everyday! But the variety keeps the kids more interested!
Step By Step Instructions:
The first thing you have to do is put all of your devices into a Speaker Group so that the music will play throughout your house! Open the Amazon Alexa App > Click on Devices on the bottom right > Click the circle with the plus button > Select Add Multi-Room Music Speakers. The app will give you the requirements to set up a speaker group.
All of your devices have to be on the same network but you can put multiple devices on different music groups.
Click Continue > Name the Speaker Group (This is also important so don’t make it crazy again! Ours is named Everywhere) > Click Next > Select the Devices you want (We have all of ours) > and Click Save! Now you have a Speaker Group that you can play the same music over all of those devices on. Hooray!
We are almost there! The last thing you have to do is set up your routines so that your playlist play when you want on the group you just created!
Set up Routines
You are going to set up 7 different routines, one for each day of the week.
Open the Alexa App > go to the three lines at the top of the app > Click on Routines > Hit the circle with the plus button in the top right corner > Click on the first circle with plus button to set up a when category > Tap Schedule > Click at Time > Click At time again and enter the time you want your cleanup timer to play > Then click Repeat and select just one day of the week! Then it will play every Monday or Tuesday or whatever day you choose!
Select Playlists/Speaker Groups
Once you have entered those parameters click on the Next button in the top right corner > Click on the add action button > Click on Music > Now you type in the playlist name that you named it in the Amazon Music App. So you want to type in “Monday Cleanup” Playlist. Add the word Playlist onto the end of what you already called your playlist.
In that same input box you also put that you want it to play on your group Everywhere. So for Mondays playlist it will say “Monday Cleanup Playlist on the Group Everywhere” Obviously with your playlist and group names.
And make sure you select that the provider is Amazon Music so Alexa knows where to look for your playlist!
The last option is a from device. This is the device Alexa will respond to if there are any problems. I usually select our Kitchen device since that’s where we are when the timer goes off!
Click Save in the Top right corner! And repeat the routine with each day of the week adding in the playlist for that day!
Just like that you’re done! Get kids to clean up, enjoy happy cleaners, and a clean house! The best of both worlds!
Happy cleaning!
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