Last week on our Organized CHAOS Facebook page, we asked you what areas of your life you needed help organizing. A lot of you seemed to be going crazy finding ways to organize your kids homework, school projects, and the mounds of papers they bring home from school. How many of you have been reminded on the DAY OF that two dozen cupcakes are needed to be taken to school for the party the kids volunteered you for? Whaaaat? You later find the notice that was sent home last week underneath the bed or stuck to the bottom of their backpack. Ugh!
June Cleaver – Leave it To Beaver
In a perfect world, wouldn’t it be just swell to greet the kids as they come in the door from school and all of you sit down and share a snack as you leisurely discuss their day and go over all the paperwork and notices they’ve brought home? Yeah, right June Cleaver. My memories of that time of day was absolute chaos. Backpacks dropped wherever, and a mad dash to locate batting gloves, find the other dance shoe, shin guards, clean tights, drumsticks, etc, and pile in the car to scream off to the next activity. Filing school papers in tidy little labeled file folders just wasn’t an option that worked for us.
So how to tame the school paper chaos? Develop a simple paper management system that both you and your kids can follow. We loved this downloadable “After School Flow” chart from www.justorganizeyourstuff.com. Print it off and nail this sucker to a wall!
Once everybody has instructions on what to do with their stuff, an “Action Center” or “Collection Center” needs to be created for a place to deposit everything. Below are a few great ideas, but use your imagination to create one that is customized to your kids needs. Locate your Action Center by the back door or in the general vicinity where your kids come through the door after school.
Action Centers
Adventures in Pinteresting
The Happy Housewife
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Forget about the whole DIY project and purchase an entire organization system for VERY LITTLE. Click any of the images below to get yours! (sometimes when you’re busy, an entire craft project just isn’t in the cards)
Let us know if any of these ideas worked for you. If you use another system to organize your kids after school paper clutter, we’d love for you to share your solution with our readers. Just describe your method in the comment section below. If we love your idea, we’ll feature it in a future blog.
