Hi, its a new school year!

Best small space shopping time for the year!  BUT for this post lets focus on the kids

How do I get my kids to stay organized?

How do I *easily* keep the home organized with so much going on?

Here are some ideas to support you in this eternal question:

Implement a 2 minute tidy up every morning and every night - for everyone in the house.  Just make this a part of getting ready in the morning or getting ready for bed.

AND a 10 minute tidy up, some time in the middle of the day; when you get home from school, before dinner, right after dinner... What ever will work for you to keep it consistent.

For these tidy ups, modify it so that it works for your family and is doable.  For example, if resistance is high, shorten it.  Maybe do 5 minutes instead of 10 minutes.  Consistency is WAY more important than how long.

Commit yourself, to tossing one thing (or more) everyday.  EVERYDAY.  And enforce everyone in your family to do it once a week.  Working up to everybody tossing one (of their own things) everyday.  This one can be hard to enforce starting out.

Change your wording to "find something you don't care about" instead of "throw something away"

*Critical* Have a home for everything.  This is most likely where an organizer would come in.  Because if you feel like your home is chaos, its pretty hard to simply decide on a home for everything.  But you can chip away, and eventually get there.  Once you decide on a home for something, become vigilant about making sure that thing goes back in its home.  Gradually more and more things will be decided on and easier to maintain.  Or hire an organizer, and get it all decided on all at once. (a typical house will need more than one session, so keep that in mind)

Decide on a uniform for yourself.  This was really helpful to me once I became a mom.  I recognized all I actually wear is yoga pants or maxi dresses, and I like prints/universal type shirts/dresses.  So it really stream lined shopping, stream lined getting dressed, and getting rid of clothes :)

You can talk about this concept with your kids, and see if they are able to become clear on what they really like.  For girls that like fashion this can be a really fun exercise.  Because I LOVED fashion as a teen, and that would have been something really fun for me.

Also as you organize your style and colors become really obvious :)

This goes for your shoes, and accessories as well.  What activities do you love doing?  What pieces do you wear most often? Daily? When you dress up?  Most of us really do not need as much as we have.  It is fun to go shopping, but its more fun to have peace in your home, easy to keep things organized, and a cushion in your bank account.  That is one of the bonus outcomes of organizing you gain resolve and clarity in many many areas of your life.

Book work and art:
Having a designated place to work, and to keep things is very important.  And have a game plan for how you will save the art work, projects, school work.  Or decide if you will not be saving anything, and toss it now.

Personally I do save a lot... When it comes to art work, I have a REAL hard time letting go.  What I did for myself, for all of my high school and college art (Interior Design degree), I photocopied everything, reducing the size, and did a collage pasting it all inside of a portfolio.  10 years of art, consolidated in one very easy to store portfolio.

Other ideas: You could make a photo album, get a bin and go through it every few months, put it all in a binder, or toss it.  Do not let loose papers accumulate! This will create stress and procrastination.  You could also let your kids decide on the system they want to implement to save their work! I suggest writing it out, write how often you two will go through it as well.

You could try toy rotation if you have extra closet space, or garage space.  If they don't ask for something for over a year, and its not sentimental consider letting it have a new life with another family.  If it is sentimental decide to set it out as art somewhere, or bring it out a a specific holiday.  For example I had some childhood toys that I would bring out at Christmas time, and incorporate into my Christmas decorations.  Now those toys are used again with my precious daughter <3

Utilize vertical space.  Wall space is an amazing way to decide on a home for everything.  You can use a peg board, command hooks, drill pretty hooks into the wall... Not to mention over the door organizers.... Decide on a home for each thing

Prepping!

This relates to organizing your time, but it will affect the actual clutter in your house.  Prepping makes the overall flow of the day just go so much better. This is something I am currently working on, when I'm successful and prepping everyday for at least 15 minutes my days just go SO much better.  I am in love with prepping and actively learning how other mom's do it, and how I can prep better.  And you can include your kids to prep for their follow day, or help you, giving them good life skills for when they are an adult.

Leading to ...Organizing your time.  I strongly encourage you to block off time when you will rest.  And to be realistic of the actual time things take, including the "wasted" time it takes to prep the task, or get to the appointment/destination

Get the support you need.  Getting the support you need, could possibly be the most import "idea" of this whole article.  This could mean meal service, ordering service, increase family involvement, house cleaners, or hiring an organizer, coach or therapist.  Having adequate support is highly underrated.  And least in the society I can see.  We all have too much on our plates, we are all stretched too thin.  Get the support you need.  Hiring me to help you organize gives you a huge boost in getting your home to the way you want it to be.  I talk about habits with you, and if you want to, we can talk about your schedule, and/or common obstacles.  I LOVE working directly with kids, which is a giant relief to you, in not having to deal with their resistance, and ta da, you get a clean room, that (typically) they enjoy keeping clean.

Capitalize on back to school sales, Think about what you typically need or want during the year, and plan accordingly.  With planning sales can be really amazing, instead of buying more than you need.  Without planning sales can very easily lead to buying more than you need. 

Capitalize on the sale: including with me, you can use the code BACKTOSCHOOL2025 to get 11% off! (extends to larger packages as well, which can only be purchased directly)

Happy new school year, sending love,

Jessica