OMG, it’s already time to get ready for school. Actually, it’s already late for some of you! Our first days are August 31 (college), September 1 (9th grade), and September 2 (4th grade), and so I barely have a week to get organized. I always leave this to the last minute – mainly because I’m in complete denial that the summer is coming to an end.
Every year I swear I’m going to get into a better routine and be more organized about school, but I seem to behind before I even begin, so I usually have given up by October. It doesn’t help that the girls birthdays are in September, and so I usually have a lot of extra party-planning tasks. But, excuses aside – this is going to be my year! Starting today, I’m going to have a plan in place to achieve my goals.
First step is to define what those goals are:
1. Get Tess to school by 7:45 AM – this means leaving the house by 7:25 AM (it’s a 12-14 minute drive, but somewhere between when we leave the house and when we get into the car, we lose 5 minutes, there’s some sort of time warp).
2. Have lunches and snacks planned the night before.
3. Decrease school paperwork clutter.
That’s it – I’m keeping it realistic and do-able so I can claim success.
Here are my top 5 tips for organizing for your school year (in no particular order):
1. A lot of getting ready for school is about getting back into routines that you’ve let slide over the summer – so dust off your meal plan, create or update your family calendar, and get your laundry done.
2. Set your goals – we all want to improve, be more organized, spend less money – whatever it is, write it down and focus on it vs. trying to improve it all. If you give it some thought, you’ll know exactly what caused you the most grief last year. Your goal may be simply to know where Susie’s shoes are every morning.
3. When you go school supply shopping, pick up one of these for each of your children. 
Put your child’s name and the school year in large letters with a Sharpie – sure, get creative and decorate it, let child pick favorite color – whatever. Now, as the papers start rolling in, you’ll have a place to put them. What you put in there is up to you – I don’t save school work, this is more for the stuff from curriculum night (open house, school night – whatever they call it in your town), or special ed/IEP papers like I have for all 3 of mine, or almost everything that comes in that’s not school work. That way I have one place to look for it when it’s late or the teacher is sending reminders about the field-trip permission slip.
4. If you send lunch with your child, then I highly recommend the Rubbermaid Lunch Blox series. 
When Tess was diagnosed with diabetes, and we had to have control of how many carbs she could have for meals, I invested in the sandwich and salad kit and the insulated bag that fits them perfectly. I love the way they keep the food separate (so as to not get soggy) and cold (the ice packs fit in-between the “blox”). It makes packing a lunch so much easier. And the salad kit – well, I never would have even considered sending salad as a lunch before we had the Lunch Blox in which to pack it.
5. This tip is also recycled – Lists. Yes, lists. Let’s face it, school comes every fall, so there are the same things that you have to do every year. Yeah, different grades and different teachers may change the details a little bit, but it won’t change the major tasks that you have to do as you prepare for the new school year. If you are looking for a cheat sheet to get you started, I have one here: School Checklist.
6. Bonus tip! I didn’t want to leave off the list because it’s such a good tip if you can use it. If you have the closet space, buy one of those hanging sweater organizers, like this: 
On Sunday night, have your child pick out 5 outfits – pants, top, underwear, socks – and put them in each of the slots. If weather is a concern (like it is here in new england!), you can have a choice of outfits with some being short sleeves and shorts, while another is long pants and a sweater. Then they can just choose that morning what they are going to wear based on if it’s hot or cold. Having a weeks worth of clothes ready saves a lot of time and aggravation.
What are your back-to-school tips?
