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Entries Tagged 'Kids Organizing' ↓
File Box for Paper Organization
When kids go back to school, paper come home from school, lots and lots of paper. What can you do as a mom to bust paper piles and master paper organization? Well, let’s break this down by the different types of paper coming in with the following 5 paper organizing tips:
Paper Organizing Tip #1: Make sure the backpack is cleaned out on a regular basis to avoid important papers & invitations getting lost in the black hole. I wrote a whole blog post on backpack organizing tips if you would like to read further tips on this topic.
Paper Organizing Tip #2: Make sure kids have a place to store their homework that is separate from all other types of paper. This is a ‘homework only’ zone. I actually wrote 5 organizing tips for homework as well. I’ve been on a roll!
Stacking Tray for Homework Storage
Organizing Tip #3: Use a file box such a the one at the top of this blog post with a folder labeled “To Do’ for papers that come home that require some action on your part. This gives those papers a temporary home until you have time to take care of the ‘actions’ and prevents them from getting lost in a paper pile. No more paper piles-yeah! Examples of types of papers you may come across are forms that need to be filled out, registration forms for activities or sign ups for a volunteer position.
Organizing Tip #4: Use a file box with a folder labeled “To Read” for the newsletters, letters from the teacher and articles that come your way. When you use a folder it will be mobile so you can grab it and go to catch up on your reading when you know you’ll be sitting for a while at the doctor’s office, on a trip in the car or on a plane. Yeah, you’re going somewhere!
Organizing Tip #5: Create a “Household Hub Notebook” for upcoming event flyers and schedules. This is for all of the papers that end up in piles on the counter or all over the refrigerator: lunch menus, party invitations, sport’s schedules, snack schedules and phone lists. I think I will need to write a full blog post on how to make a household hub notebook so please watch for that one coming up.
Paper comes at us all the time and we need easy strategies to stay on top of it all and not have things slip through the cracks. For more organizing tips for back to school, please keep reading here. 
Tags: blog post, DIY organization, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, kids organization, mom, organizing tips, paper control, paper organization, paper piles, school papers
Get Your Gear Cards
If you’ve got kids, then chances are you’ve got kids’ activities which requires gear that needs to be packed up and hauled around. And I know from personal experience that it really stinks to get to the field and realize something has been left at home! Organizing kids for their own activities is a great way to teach your kids organizing skills that will last a lifetime. I recently read about these awesome cards created by a professional organizer in Better Homes and Gardens from Simply Ordered that will help you do just that.
There are a variety of cards for different activities that show all of the items that need to be packed accompanied by the names of the items which will help little ones with their reading skills-bonus! It’s a ready-made list and it doesn’t get any easier than that!
Help your kids get organized and shoulder some responsibility for having their gear together and helping you get out the door on time-it’s a win/win!
Tags: Better Homes and Gardens, DIY organization, get organized, Get Your Gear Cards, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, organizing kids, Organizing Products, professional organizer, Simply Ordered
Homework Supply Caddy
As soon as school starts it hits: homework! Sometimes even on the first day of school, probably much to your child’s dismay. How do you stay on top of homework, get it back to school on time and reduce headaches? Follow the following five organizing tips to help make this part of your family’s day a little bit less stressful.
Organizing Tip #1: Stick to a routine. If you can, let your child have input regarding what time they would like to do their homework, I realize extracurricular activities may be the deciding factor here. Maybe your child would like to come home and have a snack and then complete homework right away. Maybe your child would rather relax, eat dinner and then complete homework. If they can have options, they will probably be more likely to not resist when you remind them what time it is.
Organizing Tip #2: Create a homework caddy such as the one above or you can even just use a handy dandy shoebox. The idea is to have supplies together in one place to make it easy for kids to move around to do homework in different locations. For ideas on what to add to the organizing caddy, please read more here.
Organizing Tip #3: Let kids work where they are comfortable as long as they are actually working. Not all kids need to go off and work alone in a quiet space. I have one child who is in advanced classes with awesome grades who can talk, listen to music or listen to the TV and work without problems. Of course this has caused many teachers to mention she ‘visits’ a bit too much. Some kids don’t like to be sent off to another area alone. I have another child who is also a good student but will get caught up watching the TV instead of doing the homework; all kids are all different.
Organizing Tip #4: Use stacking trays to store homework. This is especially helpful for younger kids who are bringing home packets that may be completed throughout the week. The stacker should only hold homework and be the go to place to retrieve homework and get it to return to school. Be sure to give each child their own tray with their name on it.
Organizing Tip #5: Teach kids how to break homework down into chunks to meet deadlines. For example, if they have a book to read for a book report, map out how many pages need to be read daily to be done with the book in time to write the report by the due date. Breaking down any task into manageable pieces is a valuable life lesson!
Help your child get organized this year while teaching them awesome skills that will last well into their work lives and beyond!
Tags: caddy, DIY organization, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, homework, kids organizing, organizing tips, stacking tray
Lockers-Barrett Robinson
Just like the backpack, the locker can become a black hole for many things large and small that need to be cleaned out. Kids are using their lockers every day, they don’t have a lot of space, they are in a hurry and often things get shoved in and never come out again. Having items stuffed in, tumbling out or getting lost in the locker can be frustrating and it can even make kids late to class, miss assignments or turn assignments in late. None of those are good things!
Follow these organizing tips to bust locker chaos:
1) Just like the backpack, the locker needs to be purged on a regular basis. You will have to decide together whether your student will let you help at the school, can do it alone at the school or if they need to bring everything home so it can be purged at home together.
2) Throw out obvious garbage and papers that can be recycled.
3) Have your student decide what is used the most and make those items the most accessible and easy to reach.
4) Be sure to use all available locker space by using magnetized mirrors, message boards and pencil holders inside the door.
5) Make sure that any items that should be stored at home are brought home or books that need to go to the library are returned.
6) Give items that belong together a home together: art supplies, gym equipment, books.
7) Have your child strive to put things back where they belong.
8) Set up an agreed upon schedule for maintenance to reorganize when things get messy or out of place. Just like our homes need to be tuned up, so do lockers.
For more reading, be sure to check out “The Organized Student” by Donna Goldberg-good stuff!
Follow these organizing tips to help your student stay organized this school year!
Tags: chaos, DIY organization, get organized, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, kids organizing, locker, organizing tips, stay organized, The Organized Student by Donna Goldberg
Lunch Snacks
It’s time to get organized for the new school year and know your kids will need to eat lunch five days a week. How can you save yourself some time and also some lunch time hassles this year? Follow these 5 organizing tips for lunch time success!
Organizing Tip #1: Create a lunch making kit. Place all of the items you use regularly close to the area where you or your kids make their lunch. You may want to include lunch sacks, sandwich bags, snack bars, juice boxes and peanut butter.
Organizing Tip #2: Create a snack bin. Open up the individual boxes of fruit snacks, granola bars and fruit leather and dump them into one big bin. This will eliminate a bunch of half empty boxes in your pantry and kids will know this is where they can go for after school snacks too.
Organizing Tip #3: Decide if the person who is in charge of making lunches is a morning person or a night person. Usually you hear the tip that you should make lunches the night before. Well, I had a friend who is a morning person tell me that it is actually easier for her family to make lunches in the morning as they are all early risers. So, make lunch accordingly.
Organizing Tip #4: Use your school prepay system. You can pay ahead for all of your child’s lunches or just pay for a few lunches for those days that your child would like to buy or you really don’t have the time to make lunch.
Organizing Tip #5: Stock up on a variety of healthy choices to keep lunches interesting for your kids and so you will know that you always have enough on hand to pull together a good lunch.
When you are organized, you know your kids will always have a healthy lunch and you can reduce some morning stress too! Yeah for less stress!
Tags: DIY organization, get organized, get organized for school, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, kids organizing, lunch, organizing tips
I had to really look around my blog to make sure I hadn’t already written about this book and I was so surprised that I had not as this is a super, awesome book to help your kids get organized for school! I’ve read the book in the past from the library and I recently purchased a used book so I could have my very own copy. Ironically, it was from a library! In the next few weeks, I will be giving a presentation to a group of parents at a local elementary school and decided I wanted to have my own copy to keep as a resource. This book is by Donna Goldberg along with Jennifer Zwiebel and covers organization for lockers, homework, backpacks, binders, planners and more and is especially helpful for middle and high school kids.
Feel free to follow my organizing tips for school and for deeper reading, I would really recommend “The Organized Student!”
Tags: DIY organization, get organized for school, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, organizing tips for school, The Organized Student by Donna Goldberg
One awesome way to help kids get organized this school year is to help them get in the habit of decluttering their backpacks on a regular basis. It may be scary to see what ends up in there-food wrappers, wadded up paper, iPod, broken pencils, invitations your child was supposed to give to you, overdue library books, old homework and a random shoe-your guess is as good as mine!
A common backpack scenario may unfold like this: A few nights before school starts, your child will load up all of their crisp new supplies into their backpack feeling ready to tackle a new year! As the weeks go by at school, they get busy and start shoving things quickly into their backpacks between classes or at the end of the day, including items that should be removed like food wrappers. And just like the rooms in your home, a backpack needs to be decluttered on a regular basis to keep a balance of what we need vs. what we need to get rid of.
Make it easy to stay on top of an organized backpack by following these organizing tips:
1) Choose one day a week with your child that will be backpack purging day, Friday-Sunday are good days to be ready to start fresh for the upcoming week.
2) Find out if your child wants to do it alone or with your help, age will play a role here.
3) Empty the backpack on a flat surface, a desk, a table or even the floor works. Keep a garbage can and a recycle bin next to you.
4) Throw away all of the obvious garbage.
5) Place items of the same type together, just like when you declutter your home. Place paper with paper, notebooks with notebooks, books with books, etc.
6) Start with a pile and start making decisions. For example with the paper pile: look at each item and decide if it should be recycled, or kept (but not in the backpack) or should go back into the backpack or in a notebook. An example of something that should be kept but not in the backpack could be a report card to save, an invitation for a party or notes that will be needed in the future to study for finals.
7) Separate all items that need to be kept somewhere else in your home or returned somewhere else such as books to the library.
8) Make sure you create homes for all of the items returning to the backpack . Make sure papers are organized in notebooks and supplies like pens and pencils are corralled in a pencil case or a special pocket so you child knows where to find them every time.
When maintenance happens on a weekly basis then things can’t get too out of control, parent and kid stress will be reduced and your kids will learn the valuable skill of organization-yeah!
Tags: backpacks, books, declutter your home, DIY organization, get organized, get organized for school, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, homework, iPod, organizing tips
school supplies for kids
Can you imagine hitting hard times and not being able to buy school supplies for your kids? It just makes me cringe to think about it. I cannot imagine telling my kids that we don’t have the money to buy their supplies. It makes me sad to think about the hit that a child’s dignity would take if they had to show up at school without supplies while other students showed up with crisp notebooks, clean erasers, sharp pencils and reams of paper. I live in a nice community and we have people struggling here and it could be any one of us.
I am so grateful that we have a Family Center here where the staff works tirelessly to help these families that are struggling. They are facing a great need this year, estimating 700 students will need to come to them for free supplies. We have 25% of our students in our community receiving free or reduced lunch-wow, wow.
When you get organized for school this year, it can mean reaching beyond your family to help other children arrive on the first day with a backpack full of supplies. This is a great time to take advantage of .20 cent glue sticks and .25 cent boxes of crayons by placing a few more items in your cart to donate to another child. If you don’t have a local family center, you can even bring those supplies to the school as I’m sure teachers will know who needs them the most.
If you have extra shelf space somewhere in your home, then consider stocking up on supplies after school starts. I have seen amazing prices on spiral notebooks and reams of paper at Target after school is back in session. This year I would like to stock up for on supplies that my own children may need later in the year as well as for the Family Center’s school supply drive NEXT year. Now I only condone this type of long-term storage if you truly have the space and these items won’t displace other items in your home (professional organizer’s disclaimer).
Over the weekend we had a neighborhood barbeque and we asked everyone to bring school supplies for the Family Center (photo above). We had an awesome party and today I was able to drop off supplies to help kids who truly need the help and that feels super awesome!
Tags: Add new tag, DIY organization, get organized for school, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, organizing kids, school supplies, space, Target
School Supply List
Get organized for the school year right off the bat by printing your child’s school supply list from their school website. We start by going through the list and looking for items we may already have at home. We often have school supplies that were brought home at the end of the previous school year or supplies that can be passed from sibling to sibling.
Gather those items and then check them off of the list-done! The next step is to take your list with you when you shop, don’t rely on your memory. You can either knock it all out at once at your favorite office supply store or you can scan ads before you leave home and map out all the good deals at different stores. Fortunately, when it comes to school supplies, every store seems to have awesome prices! I actually really enjoy buying school supplies, I love all of those crisp new supplies at .20 cents, .50 cents or $1.00! Plus, I do like mulling over the fact that we will soon be back to a regular routine again. I also think about what I will need during the year in my own office and add a few of my own supplies to the list as well.
Make sure you shop early so you aren’t stressed out right before school starts after the shelves have been wiped out. Neither you nor your child need to be stressed out about showing up on the first day of school without everything they need. I would much rather miss a few .20 cent sales and have my child’s bag ready to roll then to wait it out looking for all of the “best” prices.
I have a few other organizing tips for school supplies from a previous post when we were doing all of this last year if you would enjoy reading some more ideas!
school supplies
Tags: DIY organization, get organized, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, how to get organized, office supply store, organizing kids, school, school supplies
School Supplies
Please watch for great organizing tips to help you and your family get organized to enjoy a less stressful school year!
Tags: DIY organization, get organized, home, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, organizing tips, school
