The silence is deafening.

And I’ve got nothing to offer.

Just writing to say I agree with your principle, Danielle.  During the school year, we try to have the kids tidy up in the morning AND at night.  That way, if we miss one for some reason, we catch it on the other end.  It helps out a lot.
We still need that deep clean once a week, and the REALLY deep one once a month.
I’m not even going to TALK about the master bedroom....

Going on vacation---at least while you are gone the rooms aren’t being messed up--he he!!
Seriously, I found if we straighten up before rest time in the afternoon and then before bed, it takes just a bit of time, and if everyone is pitching in age appropriately---it gets done pretty fast, and it is really nice to tuck them into a clean room at night. The other motivator I have found that works is to invite people/priests over for dinner---when our house is getting messy--my husband likes to joke"Isn’t it time to have someone to dinner!"ha-- Sometimes it is difficult to be motivated in the same old day to day tasks that get so mundane at times---guess that’s where sanctification can come in offering the little things with Mary!!

Okay - I have two main strategies. One: Once in a while - when tempted to commit arson - I give/throw stuff away. Just did this last week (w/o the kids) and they noticed nothing. Just started playing with stuff that had formerly been buried and inaccessible.
Two: Bit by bit as you say. My motto is: Don’t go anywhere empty handed. When an object is out of place, grab it on your next trip into its native land.
Just don’t do what I used to do: stick crayons and other odd bits in my pockets for later delivery. I forgot the crayons once, and they ended up going through the dryer cycle and bleeding all over my clothes.

Oh yeah - A third strategy I completely forgot. Works great. Keep toybox stations in different parts of the house. Easy to throw stuff in!

I’ve started calling this “better than nothing” cleaning.

We only have two children so this might not work for much larger families.  When the youngest was around 18 months, we moved them into the same bedroom and turned the nursery into the playroom.  They only have their beds, dressers, music and a stuffed animal or two to sleep with in the bedroom.  The toys, for the most part, are not allowed into their bedroom.  This means no more sweeping toys aside with your feet to create a path to the bed each evening.  The playroom does tend to be pretty messy but we’re willing to live with that in order to have more neatness in their bedroom.

For the past few months we have insisted the room be picked up each night before they are allowed to go to bed.  Now to some this sounds like misery because they think the kids would just stay up all night, but it really truly works, especially when they are dog tired and WANT to go to bed.  Or for the late night readers - no reading in bed until the room is straightened.  By insisting the room be tidy each night it never gets to the national disaster level.  This really works for us.

Now this would work better if I followed through better, but one of the kids chores each day is ‘clothes,trash,books and bed’.  Daily they are supposed to get these things put away and bed made.  And then on Weds and Sat they are supposed to work on the toys too. 

Lately I’ve also just had to use the good old timer - ‘go work on your bedroom for 15 mins and start with the big things’.

And I’ve been diligent on making sure I make my bed, pick my clothes up off the floor, throw my trash away and well, there is a stack of books on the floor next to my bed but I’m reading them.... 

I can’t believe the state of my older daughters’ room at the end of the day.  It’s more than my heart can take and I can’t face cleaning the whole thing.  What I do is give each girl an item to deal with: you pick up the clothes, and you get the coloring supplies.  It’s remarkable what a clothes pick up can do for a room.  Just throwing things into the hamper, and closing the drawers can give the room a lift.  My girls have asked me to stop saying that they “trashed” their room.  It makes them feel bad, since they didn’t intentially make the whole mess at once!  I accepted their terms--it is a little harsh.

When the kids were little, pre-bedtime pick up led to huge crankiness episodes because we were all too tired to deal with it, so I switched to pre-dinner time pick up. They didn’t hang much in the rooms after dinner so the rooms stayed clean.
AND the thing about the clothes and coloring supplies - we do that too. When training the girls to pick up after themselves I told them to attack the big things, or the things they knew what to do with first. Otherwise they’d grab some object - origin unknown - and wander around with it for a half hour.

No matter what age, children need RESPONSIBILITY!  If parents start them very young at teaching how to put their toys away and clean up their own mess. etc. it’s really not hard to continue this as they grow in age!  BUT, most parents which are very very young parents and some are older and you’d think that they know better by now just don’t seem to think it’s really important - RESPONSIBILITY!!  And, then, they wonder why their children are as they are when they grow up!!!!!!  Go figure!!!  There is just NO EXCUSE!!

Janelle posted: “The other motivator I have found that works is to invite people/priests over for dinner.”

Same here.  My children respond by saying, “I hate it when anyone comes over!”