The beginning of the school year is very similar to the New Years in terms of “resolutions.” She always vows that this year she will do a better job checking backpacks, signing and submitting field trip permission slips on time, and will NOT forget to bring your child’s “Snack Week” snack. Which reminds me, I need to put that in my Outlook calendar! While you may have the best of intentions for next school year, how will this year differ from all the other years where you had every intention of doing better than the year before? How can you change your routine so that it really works this time?
Tackling the roles
I don’t know about you, but my kids bring home enough brochures, book order forms, class work, and art projects to fill the recycling bin without help. I was going absolutely crazy a couple of years ago trying to manage them all when I finally came up with a simple solution: our “Family Organizer Board.” Mounted to the wall is our foam core family board and attached to the foam core with velcro are two polyethylene project binders so kids can put their school papers in their sleeves. This works perfectly for kids! After dinner, we go through the binders and throw out all the useless flyers, congratulate the nice photos and good homework papers, and do the “evil eye” when a poor test grade appears. It is fun! But what about those extracurricular activities?
Management of activities
With my husband and I owning our own business, a high school student, and a third grader, we are everywhere! Who is going to pick up the boy? When is the appointment with the orthodontist? Do you have a hockey game tonight? Can you make dinner since I’m going to be late? Like most families, trying to figure out where everyone is at any given time is next to impossible! Although we all had our respective agendas, we did not necessarily have a large group calendar. Since I already had our family organizer board hanging crooked on the wall, I decided this would be a great place to start. I have labels for each day of the week and we all have a sticky note color that represents our appointments and activities. So if my daughter has an appointment with the orthodontist, she writes the appointment time on her bright green sticky note and places it below the day of the week it falls on; then the rest of us do the same. It makes it very easy to visually see what is happening throughout the week and also helps with my son’s handwriting skills. To prevent it from getting too crowded, I only save a week’s information to our family dashboard. The remaining future activities go to my Outlook calendar; I review them on Sunday night and write down on the family board what is happening for the next week.
This is our second school year using our family organizer board and so far everything is going well! My resolution for this school year to sign those damn permission slips on time!
If you have any suggestions, be sure to let us know. For more organization solutions for your home and family, feel free to visit our blog at [http://letstalkorganizing.blogspot.com]
Happy organizing!
Suzanne mcloone
Organizational empowerment
[http://www.letstalkorganizing.com]