Organize Your Household for Back-to-School: Communications Central

For most families, when the kids are out of school, the pace of the household slows down a bit. We schedule fewer activities and take more time to relax. The kids stay up later and sleep in longer. Sometimes, we fall out of our routines altogether. Getting back into the swing and picking up the back-to-school pace can be difficult, especially for those who find organization and time management a challenge. Are you struggling with your household’s back-to-school routine?

If your household grapples with coordinating schedules, keeping track of school paperwork and permission slips, and locating the information you need to keep everyone humming along smoothly, you may just need to change your organization system and upgrade your organization tools. The key to success with any system is to stick with the routine and get everyone on the same page. Here are some back-to-school organizing tips that have helped my household stay on track, and some great organization tools that I personally plan to order and put into service!

Tips for Organizing Your Family

Establish a Family Communications Center

• Set up your center in a high-traffic area in your home, preferably near your family’s primary phone. To function, the communications center must be located somewhere family members will see it often. (Think Grand Central Station).

• Post your family calendar on a memo or bulletin board. Hang a dry-erase board, magnetic board, or chalk board by the phone for leaving each other notes and recording important messages. If your calendar needs multi-tasking capability to track activities for a busy family and prevent double booking Mom and Dad, the magnetic Weekly Fridge Grid Organizer may be just what you need. Check it out at BusyBodyBook, available for $11.95.

• Assign each family member a color, then use this color coding system to enter dates on the family calendar. It will be easier to keep up with what everyone is doing. Record vacations, early release days, practice and game dates, special events and business meetings on the family calendar.

• Create action folders for each child. To eliminate lost paperwork and permission slips, buy a pocket folder for each child in their assigned color while you’re buying school supplies. Label the right side “For Review/Action” and the left side “Return to School.” Store the folders in an attractive magazine file in your communications center. As they unload their backpacks after school, have the kids place papers directly in the right pocket of their colored folder. Then as part of your evening routine, retrieve the folders, review, fill out or sign paperwork, and place it in the left pocket of the folders. Record any dates or reminders on the family calendar as needed. As part of their morning routines, the kids can check their folders, transfer papers into their backpacks and return them to school. Papers come in, have a temporary home, then go right back out before they have a chance to get misplaced.

• Place a trash can in the communication center and immediately toss out any papers you don’t need to hold onto. Keep your center a clutter-free zone.

• Put together a Family Handbook. Purchase a 1 1/2″ three-ring binder (or larger if needed), some colored index dividers (to color code by child) and some page protectors. Keep a three-hole punch handy for adding pages to the binder as needed.
  • Type up an important phone numbers list on the computer, including phone numbers for Mom and Dad at work, schools, police, fire, neighbors, power company, cable company, city, newspaper, and any other frequently-called or emergency numbers.
  • File the cafeteria menus so the kids can decide when they want to order or pack their lunches. Mom and Dad can check them before they plan family dinners to eliminate duplicating food items on the lunch menu.
  • Set up an events and activities section in the binder, color-coded for each child. After you’ve read and signed school permission slips and recorded special dates on the family calendar, add the pages to your handbook so you can refer to the details later. File them in the appropriate child’s section.
  • Keep information like sports schedules, team rosters and classmate contact information for each child in the handbook.
  • Check the handbook as you add new materials and weed out any information for events that have passed.

• Streamline your communication tools. Do you have cell phones, PDAs, and MP3 players plugged into outlets all around your home? Do you often forget to charge them or leave the house without them? With the kids in school, we definitely want to keep our communications tools in commission! Get a charger capable of handling multi-tasking and keep it in your Family Communications Center where it’ll be easy to plug it in, pick it up and go! Find the PowerStation at Organize-It for $21.99.

• Hold a weekly family communications meeting (preferably over the weekend) to go over schedules and discuss activities for the next week. Review the school lunch menus to see what days the kids want to take or buy their lunches; mark it down on the calendar as a reminder. In our Sunday family meeting, the kids also take turns choosing their assigned chores for the week, selecting one entree for next week’s dinner menu and collecting their allowance IOUs. Instituting a weekly family meeting will help reinforce the systems you put in place and keep everyone in the loop about what’s going on in the upcoming week.

Remember, developing a routine requires that we form a series of new organization habits. Put the steps down on paper and post it where all can refer to the list until the routine becomes second nature. (Use pictures or clip-art for little ones). It may take a little time to get everyone on board, but it will make life easier in the long run. Trust me.

If you have any tips that help keep your household running smoothly, please share them with a comment. Thanks! For more tips, see my Back-to-School Checklist for Parents. Check my next posts for suggestions on organizing your entry or hall for back-to-school , setting up a homework area and creating a kid’s reading corner.

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