Making Back to School a Little Easier -

My kiddos start back to school tomorrow!! (There may or may not be some happy dancing going on up in here around 8:30 am tomorrow – and that would be me and my hubby dancin’ :)). Maybe your kids have already started back to school, or maybe you’re still on the countdown. Either way I thought I would share with you today some of the things we have been doing the past few days in preparation for the new school year.

The number one thing I dislike most about school starting (well, maybe #2 next to getting up early) is making lunches. We pack lunches for our kids because there are four of them and we do not have a money tree in the back yard. Last spring I started making bags of snacks up a week ahead of time. I did this for two reasons – 1) an attempt to make lunch preparation easier in the morning – which it did and 2) if I didn’t bag the snacks up the kids would eat them at other times and there would be nothing left for lunch the last few days, and our grocery budget would be spent!!

So, I pulled out these containers to store the bags in. When I labeled my baking supplies I also labeled these.

One for crunchy and one for sweet. No, these aren’t the healthiest options for lunch and I am working on that, but for now this is what we got.

I also took a couple of minutes to clean the landing area – our entryway/mudroom. Now it is ready for backpacks and such!!

When I was de-cluttering my entryway closet, I showed you my tower o’ drawers, and my school/office supply storage – easy access and quick put-away is the goal here. There is so much paper that comes in this house it is ridiculous, so it is good for me to have a system. When those weekly folders come in I sort through and pick out the good stuff which goes in their drawer, and all the other stuff goes in the recycling bin. And, of course when the bigger kids decide to share with me something important from school…it goes in their drawer as well. {sigh}

I also re-organized our desk, and cleared out old calendars and out-dated papers. I also found ways to make the things my kids are always asking me for easily visible and accessible, so maybe they will stop asking me. {ha}