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Have a lot of spring cleaning to do? Everything goes faster when you have help, right? Then again, depending on your kids, that may not be the case at all. If you have tried to get your family onboard with your spring cleaning efforts in the past, you may have found that attempting to organize your home with the help of family only results in family drama. Don’t give up on getting your kids involved in spring cleaning, though. With these tips for getting kids involved in cleaning and organizing tasks, you should have better luck this year.

• Work alongside younger children, but allow teens to work on their own. Younger children feel lonely if they are left in a room to work on their own, and they may also not be very efficient. Have younger kids help you as you clean and organize your kitchen, bathroom, or another room in your house. Teens however will want privacy and autonomy, so allow them to clean and organize on their own. Never try to get involved in the cleaning of their bedrooms unless they ask you to.

• Show trust and patience. The last thing that any kid wants (especially older kids and teens) is to hear you constantly nagging them to get a chore done. Many children and teens will drag their feet on purpose when they do not feel they are being trusted to get a job done. You know that impulse to drag your own feet because you’re a grownup now and you don’t ‘have’ to clean your home? A lot of us have it; maybe you learned that in childhood! Show your kids trust and patience, and they will reward you with a job well done.

• Make cleaning and organizing easy with the right supplies. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to accomplish a task without the right supplies. Give your kids not only the cleaning supplies they need, but also organization bins for toys, closet space, and more. Plastic organizer drawers and bins can make it a lot easier to free up space and make a room look neat and tidy.

• Motivate your family. Kids are fairly easy to motivate if you think about what they want. Most children will respond well if promised a meal at their favorite restaurant at the end of a hard day of work, especially if it is somewhere you do not go often. Many will also respond well if offered compensation. Offer a shopping day or simply a bonus with their weekly allowance if they get their spring cleaning chores done.

Can it be challenging to get children and teens motivated to clean house with you? Yes, but it is not impossible, and if you steer around potential pitfalls with younger and older children, you will achieve better results with both. If you approach a child with a cleaning task and show no faith in their abilities or motivation, they will deliberately drag their feet. But when children feel you are working alongside them as partners and respecting their time and autonomy, they will be more likely to get the job done.