5 Picture Books to Inspire Spring Cleaning

Pigs Aplenty, Pigs Galore!, by David McPhail
This rollicking tale by pig enthusiast David McPhail features catchy rhymes and hysterical illustrations about the time when a hoarde of pigs descend on a man who sits quietly reading a book. When he goes to investigate the “sound of feeding” in the kitchen, he slips on a banana peel and then, he observes: “I landed on/A pile of pigs—/Some eating dates,/some eating figs./In the cupboards,/On the floor—/Pigs aplenty,/Pigs galore!” The pigs, dressed in all sorts of costumes, tear apart the house, making oatmeal in the sink, having a pizza party and a food fight. But all raging parties must come to an end. Finally the narrator explodes and orders them out. To make amends, the pigs grab brooms and mops and clean the house.

The Cat in the Hat, by Dr. Seuss
If the cleaning task ahead of you looks overwhelming, perhaps an example of a worst-case-scenario will make you feel that your stack of dirty dishes and disorganized toys is not so unmanageable after all. In Dr. Seuss’s classic, the mischievous cat arrives to the house where two kids sit bored on a rainy day, and proceeds to make a royal mess, abetted by his impish henchmen, Thing 1 and Thing 2. Instead of cleaning, of course they knock more objects about and disarrange the house further. With mother walking up the driveway, the kids are panicked until the cat arrives with his fantastic picker upper machine, that seems to have a lot more functionality than say, a Roomba. If these kids and a deranged cat can make an enormous pile disappear in a few seconds, so can you!

The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, by Beatrix Potter
Some picture books appeal to you when you’re a kid for an entirely different reason than they do when you’re an adult. I remember loving seeing the fussy, neat freak Mrs. Tittlemouse grow increasingly flustered as her ill-mannered, self-invited guests made a mess of her house. Babbitty Bumble fills her storage room with “untidy dry moss,” a beetle patters across her floor with dirty feet, a spider leaves cobwebs, and worst of all, Mr. Jackson the toad makes a sloppy mess wherever he goes. Now I realize that this mouse embodies what it’s like to be a parent trying to keep the house relatively clean. Every time you get one area sorted, you turn around and see that one of the kids has worked against you in another room. Mrs. Tittlemouse, I once laughed at you, but now, I feel you.

Five Little Monkeys with Nothing To Do, by Eileen Christelow
Speaking of kids working against your cleaning efforts, in this book, Grandma is set to visit, so Mama monkey sets her five bored monkey children to work cleaning the house. They dutifully pick up their room, scrub their bathroom, and beat the dust out of the rugs. But as Grandma arrives, they realize that they’ve undone their own tidying by tracking in muddy footprints, dirtying the bathroom, and causing their hastily stacked belongings to spill out of the closet when they go to change their clothes. Well, it’s the thought that counts, right?

How to Clean Your Room in 10 Easy Steps, by Jennifer LaRue Huget and Edward Koren
If you’re tired of breathless, perfection-demanding cleaning guides that seem to be written for inhabitants of a planet with less entropy, this hilarious book should please you. Told from the perspective of a girl ordered to clean her room, these cleaning tips keep it real, with such advice as: “Open your closet door. Shove the pile of things you love inside. Close the door as tight as you can.” Another suggestion: wad up clothes and tuck them under the bed. The illustrations by Edward Koren, a cartoonist for the New Yorker, are full of humor and messy energy.