[muxxa]

I've never been able to do this as there's usually 1-2 hours of cleanup to do after bed time. And directly after bed time I have very little will left to do housework so instead the cleanup gets delayed til 9/10pm. (3 kids) Rinse repeat :(

[KSteffensen]

Including the kid in the chores from as early as he possibly could has been a huge win for us. At 6 he can now handle stuff like simple food preparation, emptying the dishwasher and folding his own clothes pretty much unsupervised. That saves a lot of time on the evening clean up.

[danielheath]

It depends on the kids, the ages, and the phase of the moon - but I've had good success making a daily habit of "kids, time to pack up" half an hour before their bedtime routine.

We go together through the house and find good places for everything, figure out what they want to do with in-progress activities, etc.

When I started this practice, it took three people and twenty minutes to do five minutes worth of cleaning, but the kids get faster as they learn (a skill they might find useful in their own home, one day).