Try this hack for an organized classroom every time!

Looking for a way to motivate your students to keep your room clean? Try this hack my friends and I all utilize in our classrooms!

Classroom jobs are not my thing. If they're yours, that's great! Keep reading because you still might want to try this along with class jobs. For me, I don't feel like students take their jobs seriously and will give half their effort just to get them done. I'm also just not good at maintaining a good system with this- probably because I don't like it! I prefer to have a daily helper or "llama leader" each day. You can read about my daily helper here. While having a helper each day is my favorite 99% of the time, the other 1% is the reality of a messy classroom.

My helper has a few organization tasks to take care of each day (managing the creation station and library), but they can't be responsible for the cleanliness of the whole classroom. And neither can their teacher! While I'd love for my students to be intrinsically motivated to keep our classroom clean for the wellbeing of our community, that's just not reality. I'm sure you notice the kids who throw their things on the ground without a second thought are typically the ones that are allowed to do this at home without consequence. And while their parents might be okay with acting as a maid, I am not.

I can ask my class all day long to "please pick up three things from the floor" and the same messy culprits will mosey around wasting time, while my organized sweet kiddos will bust their butts to clean up after them. I've found that sometimes kids just need some extrinsic motivation (regardless of what my college professor told me).

Your new secret weapon: Mystery Trash. I promise your classroom will never look better or get cleaned up more quickly.

Here's how it works:

1. Stand by the trashcan with a piece of candy (my go-to's are pixie sticks).

2. Tell students you've chosen the 'mystery trash' or 'mystery item' in the room.

3. Watch as students frantically clean the room getting every last scrap, marker cap, and crumb.

4. When they ask if they've gotten it yet, tell them you can't reveal it until the room is clean.

5. Reveal the item and give the pixie stick to whoever picked it up.

6. Voila!

Sometimes I don't even really choose an item until halfway through clean up. I'll think "Okay, Johnny picked up that wrapper" and remember that until the end. I especially do this if there's a student who just needs a win that day. It's my favorite secret weapon! Students think it's a fun game too. We don't do this every day, just days when our classroom needs some extra help. For the most part, everything has a place, and students know I expect things to be put back in that place.

Whether or not you do classroom jobs, things get messy in our rooms. It's evidence of learning! But when the little things everywhere start to drive you crazy, play a quick round of Mystery Trash!