I certainly agree that modulating the level of supervision of the cleaning to the kid's abilities is warranted, but I still think they should be involved to the end.

I don't see it as a punishment to make the kid stick around and help with the cleanup to the extent they can; rather, it's an attempt to practice conscientious habits (if you make a mess, you stick around to see it cleaned up even if you need help to do so), in addition to the specific learning experience that some things are really hard to clean, so we should be careful in our experiments with those things.