3 Ways Your Kids Can Help Get the House Ready For the Holidays

This is a sponsored post with Swiffer. There are also affiliate links included. All opinions are my own.

The holidays can be one of the most stressful times of the entire year. Between the cooking, the guests, the parties, and the shopping, you almost need a vacation after the holidays in order to recover. However, what we've found is that instead of trying to keep your kids entertained to help relieve the stress, it is better to actually put them in the middle of all the chaos! Yes, I know, they are naturally already in the midst of the chaos, but we have some ideas to move them from being the cause to being the remedy. Here are three ways to make this happen.

1. Give them a duster and let them go wild.
Let's be honest. There's always some dusting to be done. We like giving our kids a Swiffer Duster and let them do the baseboards, window sills, and pretty much any other surface in the house. They have fun, the dust disappears, and you get to focus on baking the five different desserts that your extended family requested at the last minute.

2. Encourage their creativity.
Get some wrapping paper at your local craft store, give your kids some markers, and let them create a personalized table runner. This can be done ahead of time or can be a project that all the young ones can work on when they arrive for your holiday party. You don't need electronics to keep them entertained because filling up this entire decorative piece will take quite some time. Plus, you don't have to deal with your second cousin commenting on your holiday table setting skills because who's going to say nasty things about kids' artwork? Ok, maybe your weird old uncle will but he hasn't said anything encouraging since Easter of 1992.

3. Compete to clean the floors.
If there is one tool that the kids always fight to use (yes I'm being serious here), it's the Swiffer WetJet. When we bring it out, they are constantly wanting to use it. So put that to good use and have them compete to see who can clean the floors the fastest. The winner can open up the first present on Christmas Eve, or pick out the music, or boss the other one around or something. The prize possibilities are endless. The great thing is that this just might free up a few extra minutes of your time to actually sip a bit of your coffee that you have already reheated seven times.

The point isn't that everything is Pinterest perfect, or that it's the most incredible party ever, it's simply that everyone eventually has time to slow down and enjoy being together as a family. So remember that the best solution to holiday stress might not be to send the kids to their rooms, it might just be to send them to the supply closet instead!