Keeping Your Children Organized

I've heard someone say that cleaning your house with kids is like brushing your teeth with Oreos. No matter how many times you clean up  an hour later it looks like a tornado went through and tore the place apart. I’ve never been the type to follow my kids around and clean up after them as the toys hit the ground, because as busy mom's, "ain't no body got time for that!" So I wanted to share some tricks you can implement to keep the house looking nice AND keep your sanity!

Rule number one: Have rules and stick to them! As  much as our kids don’t like it and even rebel, structure is a key component to raising respectful and selfless children. Do you have clear boundaries set? If you asked them would they be able to tell you what those boundaries are? 

Structure leads me into my first tip…

 

Checklist: Make a clear check list of things that they need to do. Make one for the morning and one for after school. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Write it out on paper and slide it into a plastic sleeve that can be erased and written on with a dry erase marker. Make it clear that they have to finish their check list before the can play out side, play on the Xbox, watch TV, or whatever they enjoy doing. Let them know if they check off the list and they actually didn’t finish the tasks they lose their privilege for the night. Stick to your guns mom and dad!  If they slack off and don’t do their list and you let them play anyway, there's no point in asking them to help because you'll get frustrated, they’ll get an attitude and before you know it you're more stressed out than if you were to do it all yourself.  If they don’t get their list done they don’t play. There will probably be push back the first time or so but they will learn that you’re serious and soon will respect your rules and get their tasks completed. 

Baskets at the foot of the stair or hallway:  Give each child a basket to put their things in. This is has saved me so much stress. When we clean up the house anything that belongs to the kids goes in their basket, and at the end of the night (you can put it on the checklist wink wink) the kids are responsible for cleaning out the basket and putting the contents away in their rooms. We have gone through a couple different baskets so I would suggest spending a couple extra dollars and getting a sturdier bin. I like this one.    

School area: Just like the bins in the hallway give each child a bin for homework or school papers that need to be kept. I like this one. I store their flash cards, weekly papers that get turned in on Fridays, and things that will get practiced every day like Monster Math( math facts)sheets.

Have a supply caddy that holds pencil sharpeners extra erasers highlighters etc. I like this one. Or you can make one! tutorial here.

Have a shoe box sized bin to hold crayons colored pencils and markers. Go through them every once in a while to sharpen the colored pencils and throw away any broken crayons and dried up markers. I do this during spring  break and at the end of summer break when were getting ready to go back for a new school year.

Have a specific place for them to keep their book bags whether its in their room or on a hook in the mud room.

Board games:  After 10 years I have given up on puzzles. I know, I know, I know bad Mommy! But let me tell you what, I should have implemented the “one game at a time” rule about 7 years ago. I recently put a couple rules up for the game closet and, to my surprise, the kids actually follow them. My 3( almost four) year old is the enforcer and will tattle if the older kids forget. I didn’t enforce “heavy” rules; just ones to remind them to play nice with the pieces, and no fighting.

Happy Organizing!