Get Organized for School with Eight Easy Backpack Organizing Tips

August 17th, 2011 Kids Organizing

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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!