HOW do you keep your house clean with kids?

I try to keep things done throughout the day. Little bits at a time really add up. When I have a longer period, and the energy, I do the more detailed cleaning. My house is far from perfect, but it's not bad. Lived in is how I describe it. :)

I think your best bet is to simply make certain rooms off limits, and use baby gates if necessary. Confine the toys to their rooms or to a play room and only allow one toy each outside those rooms. And ofcourse, employ the lets see who can pick up the most toys game, with a reward of afternoon snack when its all picked up. give each child a bin or basket and let them throw the toys into there, whose ever basket is fullest gets to choose between 2 or 3 snacks, or 2 or 3 desserts for dinner.

It's virtually impossible to keep a clean house when you have kids, but try to encourage them to tidy behind themselves. That isn't a bad exercise and helps them to respect the cleanliness of the house, or at least the tidiness. I used to wait until mine were in bed and asleep before I cleared up behind them. A vacuum round then relax for the rest of the evening. I know it doesn't stay clean and tidy for too long, but you know the effort you've made, and that's all that really matters. As for the kids, and as I said before; get them to tidy behind themselves and start to allocate little, light household chores to them, in rotation and they will grow to respect the importance of chores and tidiness. Brightest Blessings.

Toy bins are my friend lol, I've got one in the living room and a few in my sons room. I just do a few toy sweeps a day so it doesn't look cluttered. I try and tackle one room a day, like the kitchen on Monday, bathrooms on Tuesday. I'm also lucky, my son is at that fun age where he thinks helping mommy is fun, so he dusts and helps me pick up.

I understand the feeling..:-) It's always difficult, especially if you have a very active kids. Kids seems to have extended energy mess everything around. I learned that getting angry is not a solution, I'm tired of always cleaning it after my kids as well, so most of the times I let them be. I do the cleaning when they're sleeping, of course it doesn't take long for them to mess everything around again. To my 4 year old kid, I start to do this trick though: I pretend to throw her toys to the bin if she doesn' want to help me clean them. The trick usually works, I'm surprise seeing how she loved and cared about her toys... You probably can try the same thing, so that way, your work is a bit lighten..:-)

I'm not a stay at home mom. I work full time and my daughter goes to daycare, but my husband and I have a great system. Each night per week we have "chores". Monday we clean the bathrooms and the mudroom Tuesday we clean the kitchen /dining room (throw out spoiled food in fridge, etc.) Thursdays we dust and vaccum the livingroom, stairs, and I tidy up my desk Fridays we clean the bedrooms This leaves weekends for laundry, mopping, and extra projects like windows. This gives us Wednesdays off since we are busy with our church every Wednesday night. I have also found that if I "clean as I go" it doesn't take long to do our chores each night (about an hour). Our routine is as follows: We get home around 4:15 4:30 - make dinner 5:30 - eat dinner 6:00 - clean up from dinner 6:30 - 7:30 chores 7:30 - 8:00 put our daughter to bed 8:00 - 10:00 our time We also incorporate our daugher into everything we do (she's 14 months old). While I'm cooking she is usually in the kitchen with me playing with her magnets and she "helps" make dinner. Sometimes my husband takes her outside to play with the dog while I make dinner. She helps us clean up after dinner. She loves putting silverware away. It's tiring, but it works!!!