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Organizing for Back-to-School:
Essentials for Every Child

image By Professional Organizer Lea Schneider

If you want to make life easier this school year, you’ll add some items of your own to that school supply list provided by the school or teacher. Here are a few items you need to be organized this school year. Some of them you buy and some of them are ideas that you put to work.

1) Wipe-off board: Place one on your child’s bedroom door. Help them (don’t do it for them!) to create a packing list for their backpack. The list can be checked off each morning. Instead of reminding your darling to get this or get that, you will teach them organizational skills by having them check the list.

2) A Launch Pad: Choose a physical location in your home that is your child’s launch pad. This location is where every item for school is placed so they can launch out the door in the morning. It could be a hook for backpacks in the laundry room or a row of baskets by the door or even just developing a habit that it goes on their chair at the breakfast table. Begin a habit of having them place, on the launch pad, their backpack, signed permission slips, lunch money, PE shoes and so on.

3) Extra School Supplies: Do yourself a favor and buy extras of all the school supplies. You simply do not have time to go to the store when the ruler is broken or the aqua blue marker needed for the Pacific Ocean is lost. Buy extras of all the consumable supplies your child will need. Make sure to get extra printer ink for your computer printer. Add poster board, both small and large, and report covers to your cart. These last items seem to be the ones that cause the 10 p.m. run to the store.

4) Clothing Sorter: One great organizing tool for young children is the daily clothing shelf. It is a canvas sorter that hangs from the bar of the closet. It contains a labeled shelf for each day of the week. They are inexpensive and are available online or in many big box stores. Take time each weekend, to let your child match up five outfits for the coming school days. Help them to place an outfit into the canvas sorter for each day. This lets them help match and make decisions but it eliminates the daily struggle over what to wear.

Most importantly, as you get ready to enjoy watching your child learn new things and enjoy a new school year, remember that organizing is an on-going learning process. You will need to keep reminding and keep demonstrating new organizing techniques, like using a launch pad or picking out a week’s worth of clothing. They will get the concept of organizing pretty soon and when they are grown, they will thank you for teaching them to be organized.