I think it’s never to early to ask your kids to help you with chores around the house. When my daughter turned two, I would get her to help me pick up toys at night, even if she only put a few in the toy basket. Now that she’s almost three, she picks up her own toys and if she throws food on the floor, I’ll ask her to pick it up instead of doing it myself.

At night when I’m getting her brother ready for bed, I’ll get her to do a few things for me like putting things back where they belong, or throw her brother’s dirty clothes in the laundry basket.

Some other things you can get your toddler to do are making their bed, feeding a pet, or even helping prepare meals. Even if it’s something as little as pouring a cup of water into a mixing bowl, it’s a great experience for them at this young age. It gives them a sense of pride an accomplishment, while also teaching them some responsibilities.

Here’s a little trick I use when I need to get my house clean in a hurry.

It’s hard keeping the house clean with two little ones running around. Especially when one is in the stage of throwing food on the floor and the other one is constantly dumping the toy box all over the house. I also like to spend as much time with my kids as possible, so I want to spend as little time cleaning as I can.

To do this, I just set the timer on the stove to an hour, and get as much cleaning as I can done in that time frame. If I’m really stretched for time, I’ll only set it to 30 minutes. You can use your microwave to do this too.

If I don’t give myself a time limit, I’ll end up cleaning all day long! I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so it can take me a long time just to do the dishes. But when I set a timer, I’ll try and get it done as quickly as possible so I can move on to another task before the timer runs out.