Category: Back To School / Kids

Cure the Back-To-School Insomnia!

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I had a hard time getting to sleep Sunday night.  We traveled over the weekend and I was back in my own bed, but Monday was the first day of school for my kids and it had been a busy weekend.  I had a late night case of monkey mind, with a million thoughts running in a million different directions. 

I have kid projects to work on.  My little guy requires parent time every night for flash cards and reading.  My middle guy is always struggling with time management.  There are the new challenges of Junior High for my eldest.  

I have a data project to assess marketing, client care and advertising effectiveness for the business, and a web page in need of updating.  And personally, we are starting a self prescribed wellness program as a family. 

The first draft of this listed even more challenges, but I will spare you.  Your time is precious and I am not going to waste it.  So, Monday morning, I took a deep breath in a moment of quiet, and I gained some clarity.  I reminded my self of things I tell my clients all the time.  So here they are:

  1. I may already have what I need.  I just need to look. 
    • I was headed to Target, but before I left, I took a trip through a child’s desk drawer.  I found all the items I was seeking to stock a homework basket for the dining room table, like stapler, pencils, scissors, extra glue, flash cards and a ruler.  Cha-ching!
  2. Not all these projects need to be finished today.  They just need to get started. 
    • Back-to-school routines can take a few weeks to perfect. 
    • My data projects is self assigned.  So, if it takes a few days instead of one to compile my data, so be it.  Which leads me to…
  3. Progress in little pieces is still progress.
    • I exercised this morning and took my vitamins.  Yeah Colleen!
    • I have to admit, I only walked 30 minutes instead of my goal of 45, and I did not take my vitamins until after 10 am.  But I still did both.  And since I did not have a chance to do either on Sunday, I still made progress.
    • Doing my data project one year at a time, or tackling the academic record binders one child at a time is still progress.  And much less intimidating that trying to do it all at once.
  4. Multi-tasking is a myth (that will be another blog for another day), but sometimes things work out.  And if results are more important than relaxing right now, use waiting or down time efficiently. 
    • I am safe and hands free, but I formulated this while driving on the Tollway, on the way to a client appointment.
    • My youngest has soccer practice Thursday afternoons, so I walk the loop around the park while he plays.
    • I used travel time in the car over the weekend to ask my pre-teen’s opinion on some ideas I have for my Organizing For Teens class that I am creating.  He gave me excellent insight!

So, if Back To School is keeping you up at nights, too, take a deep breath, remember these ideas and gain some perspective on your situation.

That age-old Ritual: Back To School Clothes Shopping!

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Take a walk with me down memory lane…. 

Way back when, my mom would pick, what seemed like at the time, the hottest afternoon in August.  I can remember the sunlight bouncing around the yellow walls of my room as we pulled every item out of closets and drawers, and I tried it all on (tights, turtlenecks and sweaters, even) to figure out what I needed from the Back-To-School sales.  Did I mention we did not have air conditioning?  Anyway, my mother is a saint, and I realize that now, because….

It is that time to do the same with our kids!  The tax-free shopping days are August 6-15th in Illinois, which means we are heading to the stores next week.  Lord, please give me patience.  Seriously.

This Ritual process has 4 parts – Quantity and Type, Inventory, Shopping and Prep.

1.  Quantity and Type: 

  • First things first, decide on how many of each item you need.  I have boys, and they are not too picky, but I am.  Girls or teenage boys may require more options. 
  • Also, determine size needed – I know all my kids have sprouted since the end of the school year!

2.  Inventory: 

  • Starting with the oldest or largest child, try on everything, regardless of what size in on the tag (manufacturers vary widely on actual sizes).
  • Check items for stains, holes or needed repairs.  Purge the stained and old, fix the broken and pass down (if you can) items to younger, smaller siblings. 
  • Then, factoring in the pass-downs, complete the same process for each of the younger children, in decreasing order of age / size.
  • By the time I got through the big kid stuff, and delved into our pass downs in storage, my youngest really needs nothing new.  He’ll get a couple of new snazzy things for first days and picture days, but everything else is new to him!

 3.  Shopping:

  • I do the “all-kids-at-once” shopping trip, mainly because I don’t have a choice.
  • You can try the “one-child-at-a-time” trip if you would like, which prolongs the process but may be saner.
  • We head to the stores with our lists, our myriad of coupons, our sale fliers and our clean white socks for trying on shoes, of course. 
  • Thankfully, we don’t have to buy pants and long sleeve shirts yet.  That can be put off until September or October, to spread out the impact of costs.

4.  Prep:

  • After bringing home your spoils of war from the mall (well, Kohl’s, in our case), now you have to de-tag and wash it all, get it all hung up or in the drawers, and ready for that first day of school. 
  • The rest of “Prep” can be a weekly affair, of putting together outfits for the week, or hanging tops and bottoms together, to help your young ones get ready in the morning with a minimum of fuss. 

Hope these ideas help!  See you at the Mall!

Our list looks like this:  Child’s Name:

Shirts – Short Sleeve     Size:                 Needs: 13        Has:                 To Buy:
Shirts – Long Sleeve     Size:                 Needs: 13        Has:                 To Buy:
Shirts – Hoodies           Size:                 Needs: 3          Has:                 To Buy:

Pants – Shorts              Size:                 Needs: 7          Has:                 To Buy:
Pants – Long                Size:                 Needs: 7          Has:                 To Buy:
Pants – Dressy             Size:                 Needs: 1          Has:                 To Buy:
Pants – Athletic            Size:                 Needs: 3          Has:                 To Buy:

Shoes – Sneakers         Size:                 Needs: 1          Has:                 To Buy:
Shoes – Dressy            Size:                 Needs: 1          Has:                 To Buy:
Shoes – Boots              Size:                 Needs: 1          Has:                 To Buy:

Other – Summer PJs     Size:                 Needs: 4          Has:                 To Buy:
Other – Winter PJs       Size:                 Needs: 4          Has:                 To Buy:

Other – Underwear       Size:                 Needs: 10        Has:                 To Buy:
Other – Socks              Size:                 Needs: 10        Has:                 To Buy:
Other – T-Shirts            Size:                 Needs: 10        Has:                 To Buy:
Other – Belts                Size:                 Needs: 2          Has:                 To Buy:
Other – Jacket              Size:                 Needs: 1          Has:                 To Buy:

Two New Ways to Improve Your Morning!

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It is so easy to get off track during the summer months.  Without the structure of school days, we may forget to eat a healthy breakfast at a regular time, abandon basic personal hygiene (for teenagers!) and generally take way too long to get out the door, leaving much undone.

Here are two tools to help your mornings flow more smoothly:  The “Morning Line-Up” and “Back to Ready”.

We use The Morning Line-Up every day:

  1. Start out with a clear bathroom counter.
  2. Take out all the items you need to get ready; we’ll call these the Usual Suspects in Your Morning Line-Up.  Every day, lay all the Usual Suspects on your empty counter.
  3. My Usual Suspects include Antiperspirant, Face Lotion with SPF 30, toothpaste and brush, hair products, contacts and solution, lip stain and powder, etc.
  4. Next to these are my kids’ deodorants, toothbrushes and pastes, a comb and fingernail clippers (someone always needs those).
  5. Now, as we use the item in our Morning Line-Up, we put the item back in the cabinet (or drawer, or basket under the sink, which ever you prefer).
  6. You can make this even easier by dedicating one shelf / basket / etc. for just your Usual Suspects.

This idea reaps multiple benefits:

  1. At a glance, I know what I have used or not, and I don’t forget things.  And I know when I need to nag my sons to finish.
  2. We can add new habits to the line-up, if there is something we want to improve upon.  For example, I added my contacts and solution to my Line-Up when I decided to wear them more regularly.
  3. I have a client cultivating a “Swipe and Swish” habit to tidy up the bathroom every morning.  So she adds Windex and paper towels to her counter as part of her Line-Up.
  4. The Morning Line-Up can also be used to improve other areas of your life, for example, nutrition.  When I got forgetful about my daily vitamins or supplements, I bought one of those daily medication sorters.  Now I leave it on the counter in the morning, and put it away when I am done.

The other tool I want to offer you is “Back To Ready”. 

This is a proactive, positive step to help me and my clients get a handle on our lives and our homes. “Back to Ready” means we feel ready for whatever the week throws our way.

Working from home, I find it difficult to focus on work when my home feels unfocused.  In my defense, to a casual observer my home would not look cluttered.  But I know when things are left undone, and because of who I am and what I do, I have a very low tolerance for any sense of disorganization.

So Back to Ready is very important for my success!  What does “Ready” look like?

  • Beds made;
  • Bedrooms tidied up / surfaces cleared off;
  • Clothes and shoes (oh, the shoes!) dealt with— Dirty ones in the hamper, clean ones put away;
  • Breakfast dishes in the sink or dishwasher, table wiped off;
  • Bathroom cleaned up, towels hung up, surfaces clear, mirror wiped clean;
  • Papers gathered together for me to work on them, or purge or shred them.

“Back to Ready” takes 30 minutes on a Monday morning (you pick your own day!).  It involves starting laundry and a sink of soapy dishwater, going room by room and collecting clutter, emptying trash and vacuuming.  I start it before the kids go to school, so they can tidy up their rooms and put away whatever clean laundry they may have.   And we pick Mondays because we are very hard on our home on the weekends!

Pick one spot to start, and start there every week.  You can choose the easiest room first (my youngest son’s), or the most public room first (the entry way and living room), or the hardest room first (kitchen).  It’s up to you, just choose.  Now, only spend a few minutes in each room—this is not major cleaning, this is just maintenance between cleanings, and preparing for the week ahead.

Carry a notebook, too, to jot down the random ideas that come up during this particular exercise.  The ideas could read “Need laundry detergent, need snacks for baseball, bake cookies for friend, teenager needs new dress shoes,  change smoke detector batteries, etc.”

I hope these two ideas help you get yourself and your family out the door in a calm and organized manner.  Summer is a great time to try something new when it comes to morning routines, so give them a try and see what works for you.  Enjoy!