32 August 2011 ChicagoParent.com

The beginning of the new school year can be a chaotic time for most families. With the kids having new schedules filled with events

and activities, keeping the house in order can be a challenge.

Here are four simple ways to organize your home now so you can look forward to the new school year without dread.

Avoid a catch-all area Back-to-school means

more “stuff” and the areas that suffer are usually the family room or kitchen. One solution is to create zones within the family hangout area where different activi-ties can take place simul-taneously and each family member has a designated spot for their belongings. Things such as a mail sorter, toy rack or drawer unit are a good investment.

This Solutions drawer tower (solutions.com)works well if you assign a

color to each person. Plus, it can be wheeled around.

Organizing memories As soon as your child brings

home artwork or a craft, write the date on it and save it by year. Set a date quarterly or every six months to sit with your child and sort each pile into: To Store, To Trash, To Mail (to loved ones) and To Frame. Give your child some decision-making authority on what to keep. As a proud parent, you likely want to display some of your child’s creativity, so try stringing a clothesline across their room/playroom and hang their art from clothespins.

The Schoolfolio Single (schoolfolio.com) is a great storage solution for saving your child’s art because it cuts down on clutter, is portable .

Clothes control!Clothes can become a big source of clutter, be it

dirty laundry, unfolded clean laundry or clothes spilling out of a poorly organized closet. Often the cause is multiple seasonal wardrobes co-habitating in a too-small closet, which makes it difficult to find what you need quickly.

See-through storage tubs could be your answer. Assuming you have already put the winter clothes away, you can re-use the same

tub for two seasons. For example, label one side “fall clothes” and the other “spring/summer clothes.” In the fall, store your spring/summer clothes in it and have that label facing forward, and reverse in the fall. This way you don’t have to make room for four different bins for each member, and can keep

winter/spring/summer clothes out of the way in the fall. You can do this for each season.

Create a routineAll of the above suggestions will be unsuccessful if

you don’t implement some “back-to-school rules” in your home.

Be sure to sit down as a family and assign chores, such as picking up the toys/board games when done playing and setting the dinner table. Create personal routines like having school clothes ready the night before.

This way each member feels a sense of contribu-tion and the family can work as a

team to keep your home orga-nized through the new school

year.

Pooja Gugnani of Chicago is a professional

organizer and founder of Organizing With You,

organizingwithyou.com.

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Get your home school ready