This article by Sherry Borsheim of Simply Productive and a Paper Tiger Expert, provides great tips to getting your children’s stuff, whether it be for back to school or just every day clutter, organized to cut down on the chaos and ensure your family’s sanity and peace of mind. Sherry recommends Paper Tiger filing system software for document management to help you find your paper files and other items again after finding a home for them.
No matter how chaotic it gets at home, having a system for keeping track of kids’ things is essential. There’s sports schedules and phone lists, papers to sign, health records, music books, report cards, and precious keepsakes that tend to pile up around the house.
Then there’s the sports equipment, jackets, shoes, backpacks, lunch containers, homework, projects, and electronics that your children drop at the door when they come home from school or other activity each day. Times this by three to five kids and you’ve got a giant heap sitting on the floor on a daily bases.
The key to keeping your sanity and peace of mind is to create a place for them to easily hang their coat and backpacks. I love the storage locker system if you can create space for this in your home. Also, create a homework area and have all the necessary supplies handy for their projects as well.
Then gather all the sports equipment and store each child’s items in separate bins, for each sport. Store bulky equipment in a one area, sports clothes in their closet. If they play soccer and baseball, then have a small clear container for each sport and make sure to label the bins “Soccer Clothes” and “Baseball Clothes.” When you’re rushing out the door to soccer, the right socks and shorts will be in one place verses all over the bedroom or house.
Next create a Family Reference Binder with tabs for each child. Behind each child’s tab you can file their sports schedules, music schedule and any other important phone numbers that you want to have at your fingertips! Everyone in the family will thank you for gathering all the papers and putting them in one central location!
Now to deal with all the other papers. In a filing cabinet, create a hanging file for each child and keep any awards, report cards and other keepsakes in this file for the current school year. At the end of the school year, simply take out the papers and file into their keepsake box. For larger artwork, just take a picture and store the photo in their school photo album. Or store large artwork in an art porfolio.
Be realistic about what school papers and artwork you are going to keep. The more stuff you have, the more time and space it will take up to store it. A good rule of thumb is to “keep the best of the best and let the rest go”. Ask yourself, when was the last time you looked at your keepsake box stored in your attic?
About the Author
Sherry Borsheim, owner of Simply Productive, has been helping people to work smarter, not harder for years. She specializes in resolving paper, time and information management issues. To learn more about eliminating the paper pile-up and in vastly improving your productively, contact Simply Productive at 604-233-7076.
You can visit Sherry, access her free article archive and grab lots of free stuff at http://www.simplyproductive.com. Sherry lives in Vancouver, BC Canada with her husband (her high-school sweetheart).
Also check out Sherry’s Calm Your Choas special that will give you a JUMP-START on ORGANIZING your office, home and life. She will give you her trade secrets and steps to setting up your organizing systems, including recommending Paper Tiger filing system software for document management, to be organized and manage the paper files that you need to keep in hard copy format and other physical stuff in your life.
Published with permission.
Tags: Back to School, document management software, get organized, office organizing systems, paper filing systems, Paper Tiger "finding" filing system, professional organizer
