Organizing And Cleaning For Back To School

            Organizing and Cleaning for Back to School

It’s that time of the year again. It’s time to put away the swimsuits and pool passes and to start buying school supplies and back to school outfits. Not only is it important to have everything your kids need for that first day back at school, but you will want to make sure your home is ready for backpacks and school supplies to take over. Here are some ideas for organizing and cleaning for back to school.

• When the school year starts, your kids’ lives will be overtaken by classes, afternoon activities, homework and many other things that come with the new year. In order to keep all of these activities straight, you may want to create some sort of to-do list to keep all of the family’s activities in line, as well as making sure chores and cleaning still gets done in the chaos. A great way to keep track of everything is to have a calendar in a popular place in your home. (For example, the kitchen.) Make it a rule that you and your kids cannot leave the house without checking the agenda for the day. If getting their chores done seems to be a feat, have a chore wheel or task chart that alternates who does what. This will help to switch up the monotony of cleaning. This will also help motivate the kids to check what their chores are more frequently.
  
• A helpful hack for keeping homework stations clean is to use a shoe organizer. If there is one room in your house that the kids most often do their homework in, designate a door and hang a shoe organizer over it. This organizer can be used to hold pencils, pens, glue, rulers and any another school supplies that your kids may need to get their work done. If you find that they work all over the house, create a homework station bin. Fill the bin with all of those same homework necessities and make sure to set the standard that when they are done, your kids will put the items all back where they found them. This will help stray pencils or paper from being left behind, and also creates a place where they know they can find everything they need to get their work done, rather than wasting precious play time searching.
  
• Going back to school also means going back to making school lunches. Planning meals for a week or a month can seem like a lot of work, and sometimes it seems easier to just pull something together the night before or the morning of. You actually may find that taking the time to plan out your kids’ meals for the week will save you both time and money, and will even keep your house significantly cleaner. There are many ways to plan lunches and snacks ahead but here are a few helpful tips.
  
• If you have a pantry, you can organize it by placing bins inside and labeling them for common lunch essentials. For instance, one bin may be designated for chips while another may have juice boxes. This allows easy access to anything your kids regularly need, and keeps the pantry organized as well. You can also use a chart or checklist that will log what the lunches will be for the week to make sure you are not serving the same thing every day, and to also remind you if you need anything new from the grocery store. With such crazy schedules for the modern family, having techniques like these that you use to prepare lunch will help you feel less frazzled and will help keep your house tidy.

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The beginning of a new school year is an exciting time for your kids, and for you as well. The last thing you want to do is be stressed over messes in your home. These tips are just a few ways to help keep things calm when you are busy, and will allow you to come home to a clean house at the end of the day. Welcome back to school!