Clean up: remove a mess or make someone clean

The idea

A noun can go before or after up: clean the workbench up / clean up the workbench. Pronouns go in the middle: clean it up. Use clean yourself up when you make yourself clean; the past is cleaned up.

Examples

• We cleaned up the spilled juice with a cloth.
• Lea cleaned the workbench up after painting.
• Lea cleaned up the workbench after painting.
• Please clean it up before the next group arrives.
• Omar stayed behind to clean up.
• The children cleaned themselves up after playing in the mud.

Watch out

Without an object, clean up may mean clean yourself or clean the surrounding place; context decides. It can also include making things tidy, so it is not always sharply separate from tidy up.

Try it yourself

1. Choose the correct option. Yesterday we ___ up the spilled juice. (cleaned / clean)

   Show answer or example answer

   cleaned

   Cleaned is the regular past form for the completed action yesterday.

2. Choose the correct option. Please clean ___ before the next group arrives. (it up / up it)

   Show answer or example answer

   it up

   The object pronoun it must come before up.

3. The children removed mud from their own faces and hands, not from another person's. The children cleaned ___ up. (themselves / them)

   Show answer or example answer

   themselves

   The children clean their own faces and hands, so the object refers back to them: themselves.

Use it today

Describe a spill and how someone cleaned it up. Then describe someone making themselves clean after a messy activity, using a reflexive pronoun.