One in, one out is one of my favorite organizing principles. What does one in, one out mean? For every one thing you bring into your house, you should move one out. It’s a great way of maintaining your space once you’ve decluttered. It’s also a great strategy for getting your home to the stage Read More
Category: Organizing for Kids
Get Your Teen Organized By Creating Routines
Your school-aged kids and teens are close to midterm time and you’ve probably got a sense of what’s working or isn’t in your family’s school year routines. Courtney Harris of Courtney Harris Coaching is the author of this week’s guest post on the importance of routines for teenagers. She and I will be co-leading a workshop Read More
Make Back to School Less Brutal with Checklists for Kids
It’s back to school time and the transition can be brutal. Remembering what to take out of the house, getting stuff done once you’re home, and getting to bed on time can feel harder at this time of year than any other. Make your family’s life easier by creating checklists. Checklists for What? Introducing checklists Read More
Back to School Organizing
Back to school time can feel chaotic, but it doesn’t have to be chaotic. How do you make the shift? 6 Tips for Back to School Organizing Set an intention. What do you want the start of the school year to look like? To feel like? For your kids and for you? Identify the obstacles to that Read More
Organize Your Summer with Kids for More Fun & Less Stress
If you’re a couple of weeks into summer, you may already be feeling the lack of structure the school year provides. Summer offers many organizational challenges: inconsistent schedules, summer trips, sunset at 9 p.m., camps, playdates, and more. It also gives us a chance to spend more time with the kids, which we hope can Read More
Teach Kids to Be Organized This Summer
Summer offers both challenges and opportunities for helping teach kids to be organized. Last week I wrote about how to create a Summer Fun Board that will mean your kids have more fun than they could ever write about in a “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay. You can do more this summer than plan Read More
Organize Picture Books for Kids
Wrangling books is hard for kids. Why? The books are heavy. They tip. Bookcases have long rows of things that little hands have a hard time balancing. All this to say, typical bookcases can be hard for kids. Besides the coordination involved, beginning readers have difficulty picking out titles in a long line of books. Read More
7 Tips to Teach Kids to Clean Up
Why don’t kids want to clean up? For so many reasons, many of which are really good ones. Understanding their objections makes it easier to teach kids to clean up. Why Kids Don’t Like to Clean Cleaning up makes things harder to find. When toys are on the floor, kids can find and play with them. Read More
Beautiful Easy Tags for Bins & Baskets
One of my favorite uses for a tissue box is to make tags with it. Tissue boxes have pretty and colorful designs, are thin enough cardboard to cut, and make sturdy tags for your bins and baskets. I have one set in my kitchen for dish cloths, cloth napkins, dust rags, and aprons, and another Read More
20+ Ideas for What to Do with Kids’ Art
What can you do with children’s artwork? Most of my organizing clients just aren’t sure what to do with their kids’ creations. Neither are most parents. There’s so much of it. Some of it is beautiful. Other pieces are markers in time: a handprint, the first collage of shapes your child made after mastering scissors, the Read More