Create a Functional Entry Space
Take charge of clutter at the entrance area of your house! Designate an area that stops chaos and starts organization before it invades they rest of your home. Cubbies, hooks, pull out baskets, along with a bench all can help the process of putting on shoes, hanging jackets, finding backpacks and essentials for the day ahead.
Labeled baskets are great for smaller items and appealing to your team’s natural sense of maintaining order which will add up to smoother days ahead as things become a habit.
Organize Your Laundry Room and Train Your Peeps
Streamline your dirty laundry sorting by using labeled baskets for darks, colors, lights, and items that need quick turnaround for the next event. School clothes and team uniforms can get out of control fast, and become an ordeal as your team awaits.
Avoid the endless search under beds or inside gym bags by training your peeps to be responsible for their clothes and provide baskets for them to use and deliver to the laundry room when full.
Save more time, by assigning baskets for clean uniforms and clothes for each child to take into their rooms and put away.
Set Up a Family Communications Station
Every family can benefit from a central command center. Calendars, schedules, papers that need to go to work or school, dry erase boards, to-do lists, are all things that you can centralize in your new family communications station.
Create a Snack Station and Enlist the Kids
No one wants to spend precious time packing lunches for the day ahead and creating a breakfast for everyone. In crunch time, this can add stress and create havoc on your mental well-being and make you chronically late. The solution lies in creating breakfast and snack stations.
For the snack station, bag veggies, grapes, cheese sticks, yogurt tubes, and other perishables, and keep them in a designated drawer in the refrigerator. For other items, designate a pantry shelf for juice boxes, cookies, chips and pretzel treats. Get the kids involved so they’ll take ownership and gain responsibility. Who know? Maybe the kids will even start making their own lunches once it becomes this easy and organized.
For the Breakfast Station, it can be as simple as a cabinet or pantry shelf that contains cereal, bowls, utensils, snacks and drink. Pre-fill Tupperware containers with your kids’ favorite cereals. And if possible, keep this area away from areas that you’ll need to work in to make movement easier.
Get Your Car Under Control with Car Organizers
Be organized on the go with a few clever ideas for the car. Behind the seat organizers are the perfect solution to having things handy. Fill it with everything you and your kid(s) need for the busy day ahead. Things like wipes, sanitizers, water bottles, snacks, anything the kids may need on their way to school.
Get an organizer for the trunk for other activities. It will ease your mind not to hear balls rolling around the back of your trunk as you drive the kids to practice. This will help declutter your garage or mudroom and save endless time searching for practice gear or extra-curricular equipment. Start off your week right, by preparing once for the week ahead.
Organize a Home Cleanout and Reclaim Space
You’re bound to love the tips above, but if you’re at a loss for space from the onset, start with a home clean out. Getting things out of the way in the beginning will also help you save time and motivate your family before back to school craziness takes over.
Go through closets, junk-rooms, basements, attics, and garages and make decisions on what you no longer need and have been longing to get rid of. If it’s too much for the garbage man and you’ve already had a yard sale, call a professional home clean out company near you to help you reclaim your space.
Another story altogether, estate clean outs pose a different kind of challenge.