Here it comes, the before and after school mess that fall brings and never really goes away until summer. Getting everyone organized and out the door, on time in the morning can seem almost impossible. The mess that is left behind in the whirlwind in the morning will be waiting for you in the afternoon unless you take some steps to prevent it.
Time to get organized and structure your routine, you will be glad you did. First things first, have your child pick out a week’s worth of outfits, right down to the underwear and shoes. Fold everything together in a drawer or on a shelf, they get to decide what to wear each day but everything is together so they don’t have to dig through closets and dresser drawers to find matching socks.
Put a coat tree or wall hanger by the door the kids use. They can hang their jackets and backpacks and if you keep a few bins underneath they can throw their shoes, hats and gloves in those. In the morning everything will be right where they left it, and not all over the house.
Insist that when homework time starts the first thing they do is clean out their backpacks. Kids accumulate a lot of paper, at least my daughter did, and most of it was shoved in her backpack. The days I forgot to remind her to clean it out where always the days there was something for me to sign and return. Also if their backpacks are cleaned out every day there is less chance of homework getting lost.
Have a central area for doing homework and make sure you have all the supplies they need handy. If they do their homework at the kitchen table use a dishpan for paper, pens, pencils, markers, glue. Stapler, hole punch and a dictionary, anything they will need to complete their homework without tearing your desk apart.
After homework is finished everything goes back in the backpack and gets hung up again. The biggest mistake I made was letting Hailey take her backpack in her room; it’s amazing how you can lose an entire backpack between dinner and breakfast.