{Originally written for Kidspot}
Today I am tackling the kids school bags. This is a never ending saga! Where do I put them, how do I make sure the lunch boxes don’t start growing mould, how do I keep up with all the school notes?
With three boys, this isn’t an easy task. They aren’t clean freaks like their mother. They throw their bags around, refuse to unpack them and I am known to miss a note or two!
I always struggle with the idea on WHERE to keep them? I don’t want them hanging around the kitchen and I don’t want them in the kids’ bedrooms.
It really depends on the layout of your house as to where they go.
In my last house we had a walk-in-pantry, so the school bags lived in there (there was plenty of room). In this house my garage is off my kitchen, so they’ve found a neat little spot in there…
In the NEW house we’re building I’ve become super clever and built a spot for them in my laundry which is between the garage and the kitchen…
So the bags come in to the kitchen (from the garage) to be unpacked, then straight in to that storage room.
I think I’m very clever! I’ll make a shelf or a hanging spot and they sit hidden away there each night. No tripping over them in the kitchen, they don’t hang in the doorway and everything has a perfect spot.
Where do you keep yours? Have you got an even better idea? I’d love to see what you do with them! I only have 3 kids, so I’d love to know what larger families do with them.
As the boys head back to school, I thought they could do with a few new goodies for their school bags, so we popped over to Officeworks to stock up.
Notice the pink pencil case with MUM on it? That’s mine. My kids never put lids on things, they wreck everything and then we never have that black texta, or good scissors for the school project. I decided to make my own pencil case and my boys now have to ASK me to get anything out of it. Tricky hey?!
How do you keep up with their school notes? If your house is anything like mine I get at least 10 notes a week. Excursions, newsletters, anything-a-thon-donate-money, church… I have a good habit of pulling them straight out of their bags, reading them and binning the unnecessary clutter. I stick all the important ones straight on to my fridge (with my new magnetic clips!). This makes it easier to keep track of where we are up to. If I just pull them out of the bag and shove them straight in to a drawer I am positive I’ll forget about them. I need them visually in my face to remind me. Do you have a better suggestion? How do you manage?
Do you make your kids unpack their own bags? Do they re-pack them in the morning? Mine are good at packing them in the morning, but it’s like pulling teeth to get them to unpack them in the afternoon.
Are you always tripping over the school clutter? School will be back before we know it and I’m ready!
