Tip of the Day – Get Organized This Summer!

Posted by Cindy on May 30, 2007

Around here, summer’s the time I take to get organized. I try to work on everything from my pantry to my files to my homeschool room.

I don’t know about you, but by the end of a long school year, I’ve let a lot of things slide in the area of organization. A pile of school papers that need to be filed here, a stack of coupons to be clipped there.

I know this won’t cover everything – it probably won’t even be the tip of the iceberg – but here are some things I’ll be organizing this summer. Please share your tips!! I’m always looking for great ideas to pull myself or my house together.

Homeschool Room

-Go through all of ‘06/07 schoolwork. Keep a select few samples, pitch the rest.

-Go through all book shelves. Pull out things to sell, pitch & give away. Organize the rest by subject.

-Go through all supplies (art, writing, manipulatives, etc.) Pitch the old, organize the good and make a list of things to buy at the back-to-school sales.

-Start gathering next year’s curriculum, planning sheets, notebooks and such.

Pantry

-Get everything organized (yet again) with like items. Put older cans and boxes in front so I’ll use them first.

-Make a “permanent” grocery list of items that I buy frequently. I’ll keep copies of this list on a clipboard (with pen attached) in my pantry. As I notice I’m running low on something, I can quickly check it off on the list. Organize the list in the order of the aisles at my grocery store so I don’t miss something and have to backtrack. (I copied, pasted and slightly modified a list for myself from what I found here.)

-Print off several copies of a weekly menu planner to keep in the pantry, too. (I found a great menu/grocerynotes/daily notes planner here.)

-Organize my coupons and figure out some good way to use them before they expire! (I’m so bad at this one – any suggestions would be appreciated!!)

Kitchen

-Reorganize all my spices so that I can actually find them without having to unload every bottle from my cabinet. (I ended up only keeping the spices I use frequently in the cabinet.  I put the rest in a box in the pantry.)

Before

After

-Organize the plastic containers so that all the bowls and lids don’t fall out on me every time I open the cabinet.

-Buy plastic shoeboxes to organize the smaller containers in my refrigerator.

-Clip only the recipes I actually use from the mountain of cookbooks I own and put them into a notebook. Pitch or give away the rest of the books.

Office

-Set up a better system for in/out/to do mail and paperwork.

-Go through file cabinets and purge everything I can.

-Organize manuals/warranties alphabetically.

-Go through all magazines. Rip out and file important stuff. Give the rest to friends, family, nursing homes…

-Figure out some way to organize all the pens, pencils, paper clips, staples and hundreds of other little things in the office space.

Clothes & Toys

-I usually do these twice a year when we switch out clothes for the fall/winter and spring/summer seasons. We go through everything and decide what needs to be stored for another sibling, what can be given away and what needs to be pitched. I don’t do yard sales. (Oh, but I do shop them!!) First reason, we live to far off the yard sale path. Second, everything I would put back for a yard sale would find its way back into the life of one of my family members before I could sell it!!

Basement

-Try to find LOTS of cheap, but sturdy shelving. Everything down there needs to be organized. In fact, I may just pretend none of that is even there this summer!

Computer

-Download all pictures onto disks to have a hard copy in case of a computer crash. Make extra disks to give to my parents, so there is an extra copy in case I lose mine or something happens to it.

-Download all important files onto disks for the same reasons.

Pictures

-Organize all loose pictures into photo boxes in chronological order.

-Buy some frames to display more pictures.

Okay. I think I’ll stop. If I organize just a few of these things this summer, I’ll be doing really well. It is summer, I want to play, too!

Related Tags: homeschool, summer, organize