Spring Cleaning Family Scavenger Hunt (Free Printable!)

#freeprintable #springcleaning #choresforkids #chores #chorelist #scavengerhunt #family #spring #PalmoliveMultiSurface #CollectiveBias

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All opinions are mine alone.

I saw a sign at a nursery the other day that said, "I got so excited that it was spring, that I wet my plants!" Bwahahaha! I don't know about you, but I get ALMOST that excited! Haha I love the new life everywhere and the weather and the time outside and the excitement you feel from your kids. It even makes me more motivated! And then...this leads to thinking about spring cleaning! I have to say that by the end of winter, I am READY to open up the windows, and clean the whole house...get all the dust out, clean out the kitchen cupboards, organize everything... BUT...my kids don't get quite as excited about it as me! Imagine that?! Ha! So, this year I decided to try and make it a little more fun and to include the whole family in the Spring Cleaning Event! 

I started by coming up with this Spring Cleaning Scavenger Hunt. 

I tried to include things on the list, that needed done for Spring cleaning, but that were also items that my children were capable of doing (or at least helping with). My idea of Spring Cleaning isn't your typical vacuuming, dishes, and doing laundry, because those things need to happen almost daily anyway at our house. Spring cleaning for me is those items that don't get done very often, but still need the attention. (If you want to see more ideas of age appropriate cleaning lists/chores, you can see my post on chores for kids, where I list a bunch here.) I figured that if we did the spring cleaning as a family, then they (ideally haha) get done faster, and there is more time to be out hiking and enjoying this nice spring weather too!

So here is what our Scavenger Hunt was made of:

Spring Cleaning Scavenger Hunt

(Feel free to print this out as is, or find it in a google document here. For personal use only.)

Once I had the Spring Cleaning Scavenger Hunt ready, I was off to Walmart to pick up the needed cleaning supplies. I had made a list of different cleaners I needed room by room and task by task ahead of time. One of the items on my list was dishsoap and a kitchen cleaner. As I was walking down the kitchen cleaning aisle, I found this new Palmolive® Multi Surface cleaner. Perfect! Palmolive® Multi Surface cleaner has double uses...dishes AND other kitchen surfaces. No need to buy two different cleaners now. And Palmolive® Multi Surface eliminates 99.9% of bacteria (*staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella enterica and E. coli ((157:H7)) from dishes and hard non porous kitchen surfaces! I think all kitchens need that in a cleaning solution. Checked that off the list...and ready to check out.

Now, we were ready to get our Spring Cleaning done! We split up the family into teams. We have a large family, so we went with 3 teams, but you can do as many, or as few, as you want. I had figured that a small "prize" for the winning would help motivate my kids. BUT, I also thought that everyone deserved a reward for helping, so ice cream cones seemed like a perfect idea for a reward for ALL, after we were done. And the team that got the MOST done, could get double scoops!We set a timer and started on our Spring Cleaning Scavenger Hunt! And so...with that ice cream in mind, it was time to go at it!

Some of us were more enthused than others. haha

I followed the instructions on the Palmolive® Multi Surface cleaner and mixed up a solution for all of our kitchen surfaces. It worked great!

It ended up actually being a fun time, where we were all really productive! I knew that the kids would lose steam if it went on too long. So we set the timer for one hour and figured if there was still a lot more to do after that hour, we could always do another hour later in the day. But with 7 of us working (even the 3 year old proved helpful!), we were able to get a LOT done in that hour. It didn't necessarily equal 7 of MY hours cleaning or my husband's but it definitely equaled a few hours of mine. I also love that we were all focused on the same thing (So there were not as many disctractions for me from the kids, like when I am cleaning alone.). I also love that it taught my kids that we work as a family to make life better, and taught them more about cleaning in general. I know that this will help them a lot in their future years.

This could also be a fun youth activity to do with a large group of kids, maybe a church youth group... You could go from house to house and do service for others, as you check things off the list.

No matter who you do this Spring Cleaning Scavenger Hunt with, I'm sure everyone will sparkle a bit more at the end of it. haha And this way, it makes it more fun and everyone's happy! Or at least we hope so! 

How do you get your spring cleaning done? All in one day? Or spread out over a couple of weeks? I'd love to hear your tips!