The Clutter Jail

I've started to write this post, what feels like, a hundred times, but I'm never quite sure how to put it. In the long and short of it, our fantastic cleaners, for the most part, took a cleaning hiatus at the beginning of November. It kind of reminded me of this mother who took a cleaning hiatus to show her kids how much she does around the house, except reversed. And trust me-- it worked. Mrs. Saini and I were so aware of what fantastic cleaners they could be, and we missed them.

So after pleading, begging, bribing and more, someone came up with the idea to start a clutter jail. Today all of our friends came in at 8:25 to our SUPER DUPER REARRANGED classroom (lots of excitement there, and a new post tomorrow!) and we were introduced to the clutter jail.

Clearly he is not clutter OR a child in our class, but he is sitting in a clutter jail that looks nearly identical to ours!

 Every clutter jail has it's own rules. Some clutter jails have moms and dads who have kids do chores to get their toys out. Some clutter jails have parents who have kids say or do a nice deed to have things out of the clutter jail. There is even a mom who had a clutter jail that had a life sentence. Our clutter jail, however, had a very simple set of rules.

1. When most of the students are sitting on the carpet at the end of tidy up time because they feel like they are done tidying, the timer goes on for 2 minutes.
2. When the timer goes off, Mrs. Walt puts on her handy-dandy SUPER TOY FINDER glasses and walks around looking for toys.
3. When Mrs. Walt finds a toy, it goes in the clutter jail.
4. When a students wants to free a toy, they ask a teacher what they have to do. They will be directed to help tidy the classroom in some way (i.e. tuck in 5 chairs or tidy up boots or pick up 3 pieces of garbage, etc). Once they are done, they can choose a toy from the clutter jail and "free" it.

So far, our clutter jail is looking pretty barren. Every child helped to keep our classroom clean and it was great! Our toys were put away, nothing was "locked away" and we all practiced teamwork when cleaning our room. It looks like we have re-inspired tidy-up time in room 101!

What tips and tricks do you have for keeping everything tidy? Do you have a special incentive?