I need some parenting help. As the A3 report below will show, our young kids are slow at picking up their toys. The older one is old enough to slow down on purpose and play games with us, and the younger one is young enough or has the personality to be oblivious to most scolding.

Either way, yelling at kids is getting old. Here is the A3 titled Pick Up Your Toys! Details of A3 are below the image.

Situation: What is the problem?
Kids not cleaning up toys in the play room quickly enough. This causes stress to their mom who shouts at kids, and Jon gets stressed by kids’ mom shouting. This is a daily occurrence.

The target condition is no shouting about toys.

Root Causes:
Problem: Kids’ mom shouts because kids clean too slowly.
Why? Older kid does not want to clean up all toys quickly.
Why? Older kid thinks it is unfair.
Why? Younger one is not helping even though she got the toys out - she is playing while older one cleans.
Why? Younger kid is just being a kid.

Problem: Older kid says she is too tired or it is too hard to clean all of the toys by herself.
Why? There are too many small toys.
The books are packed into the bookshelf too tight. Some toys need to be put back up on a high shelf (easy to get down, not easy to put back).

Countermeasures: How to fix?
1. Give younger kid other task similar to cleaning that she can do, to keep her away from toys she likes to play with, so she does not play while older kid is cleaning.
2. Give away some toys to make cleaning easier.
3. Reduce the number of books on shelf so they are not packed in so tightly.
4. Make “if it’s left out, we throw it out” a rule

Verification: How will you check?
1. Toys being put away within target time (5 min)
2. No more shouting about toys

Adjustment: What further action is needed?
(Blank since no countermeasures have been tried.)

I created this A3 report while on the road and away from the gemba (kids' play room). I readily admit that my grasp of the current condition is not as strong as it could be. Is the target condition "no shouting" or "toys picked up quickly"? What is a reasonable time for the kids to clean the toys to prevent shouting?

I have not yet done nemawashi with all of the players in my house to develop ownership of one common problem. I am doing early-stage nemawashi with any of you parents out there who might have good tips on how to reduce the shouting at kids because of toys not getting picked up quickly enough.

(Here is the Microsoft Word document A3 report template used to create the one pictured above. It is actually formatted for A4, or 8x11 size due to my poor relationship with printer settings.)