Jean's Jems

Organizing for the New School Year

I was having a conversation with a fellow Mom yesterday, and as we were talking I mentioned that I have several schedules for getting ready in the morning for school. She suggested that I pass on these ideas, so here you are. Now before I get into the details, I do need to let you know that my close friends say that I am a bit of an organizing enthusiast. Anyway…when I was getting ready last year to start my 5 year old daughter off to a full day kindergarten, I knew that without some structure to our mornings, we would be in for a rough year. First off, I am not a morning person, so every bit of help in the morning is welcome. I am fortunate that my husband goes to work very early, so he is up and gone before either myself or my daughter are up, and I only have one child to get going. This eliminates much of the morning confusion that I hear about from my fellow moms. I do believe that these ideas would work well with a full household, too.

So, as I thought about what we needed to do in the morning, I came up with 3 basics: get my daughter dressed for school, get her breakfast and get her snack/lunch ready to take with her. This sounds easy enough. For a day or two, it is. For 200 days [Sep-June; M-F] this was going to be less than fun. So…with my organizing brain in gear, I created 3 schedules.

The 1^st was clothes for school. Together with my daughter, we created 10 school outfits and made a 2-week – Mon-Fri schedule and posted it on her closet door. We even included what shoes and how to wear her hair. Every night before bed we hung out the next day’s outfit all ready for the morning. This worked very well. I always knew that the clothes she needed were clean and ready and there were no morning “disagreements’ on what she was to wear to school.

The 2^nd schedule I created was for breakfast. This may seem silly to some of you, but remember I am not a morning person and deciding between eggs and Captain Crunch uses up those valuable morning minutes. Anyway…I made a weekly schedule for breakfast – again together with my daughter we created 5 nourishing breakfasts.

3^rd and lastly we created a weekly schedule for school snacks/lunches and after-school snacks. I put these together on one schedule and we posted it on the pantry cabinet door.

I have to say…these worked FABULOUSLY. I am just now getting ready to revise last year’s schedules for this fall. You can make this a fun family project, too. Put the schedules on a larger sheet of paper or poster board and let the kids decorate it.

I hope that this gives you some good ideas for your household. I would love to hear any stories that you would like to share and or ideas that you have to help keep your family organized.

God Bless, Jean.