3 Ways to Control School Clutter
Preparing for the school year ahead is one thing, but what about preparing your house and domestic routines for back to school? Life with a school child seems like an endless round of dealing with backpacks, sports bags, flyers, excursion forms and library books cluttering up the house. But there are ways to get organised for the school term and prepare your house with these stress-free routines and ideas to cure school clutter.
Make a school station to keep the house tidy
Start with an old bookshelf, chest or dedicated place as the main “school-station”, which is really a place to keep the assortment of school belongings.
Your children can help to paint or design the school station to their style, but other ideas to organised the school station include:
- Adding strong hooks for back packs, hats, jackets.
- A milk crate on the bottom shelf can hold umbrellas or sports gear.
- Cut the top and back off cereal boxes to make “IN – OUT” boxes. Your children can help you cover them with wrapping paper. Great for all those school notes, newsletters and permission slips.
- A clean yogurt container can hold lunch money.
- Attach a whiteboard onto the side for important dates and reminders about library day and sports
practice.
Keep school art and drawings in a homemade pizza box
A solution for all those artworks and projects that come home which you feel too heartless to throw away but need to stash somewhere. Visit your local pizza shop and ask nicely for some large pizza boxes. Let each of your children decorate and label them with name, grade and year. Use the boxes to store those projects you don’t want to throw away. These boxes will store easily under the bed.
Don’t forget technology to keep you organised
Keeping school work and sport commitments on track is not as hard as you may initially think. You don’t have to write in a big dorky planner on the wall, but could try buying some iPhone apps to stay organised – the US iTunes store has some great free applications to peruse. But let’s not forget Google’s free apps to keep you organised.
If you have a Google account, you also have Google Calendar in which you can create different sub-calendars and label one of ’em “menus” and another “school appointments”. You can keep track of all the appointments and even share calendar events with your partner.
GET ONE-ON-ONE SUPPORT
If your child could use help with a specific subject or you would like one of our certified tutors to work through to ensure a productive and successful school term, call and speak to one of our consultants today on 1300 4200 79 or click here and fill in the form and your regional manager will be in touch.
