With school comes clutter, so make space to contain the chaos before it spreads throughout the house! Create an area with benches, baskets, or a hall tree specifically for backpacks, purses, briefcases, and things we take with us on a daily basis. Don’t think it’s just the kids that need this type of organization; us parents can benefit immensely from it, too! If you want to get super creative, make a space that has cubbies to hang items, or a bench that you can place baskets underneath with each person’s name. Everyone in your family will appreciate having their own space to place their day-to-day items, and it will greatly cut down on how many times your kids will ask “Have you seen my _______?”
As for the clutter created by all of those old projects, artwork, and schoolwork that tend to coalesce into piles like mini leaning Towers of Pisa. A lot of kids and parents understandably have a hard time tossing these keepsakes, but they also don’t have the acres of attic space to store them all. That handprint turkey Billy made in 1st grade is adorable, but there are only so many handprint animals one can keep before the zoo starts taking over the storage closet! One solution is to make two stacks, one of Absolutely-Must-Keeps and another of Want-To-Remembers. Use your smartphone to take pics of everything, then upload them via app to a cloud-based photo album (Google Photos or Flickr, to name a couple) where you can further organize the pictures by child, grade, theme, etc. The essential Must-Keeps can then be stored in stackable plastic bins, while everything else can be tossed in good conscience, knowing that you can still revisit them and reminisce any time through your online photo album.