Staying organized with kids

Staying organized is one thing I work really hard at. For me, I find that it keeps the stress levels down, frees up more time to spend with my family, and just plain works! With four kids organization is mandatory (if you ask me). Our mud room is one room that I use as a family organization room. I'm going to share a few of my tips and tricks to staying organized with kids!

First up....the embarrassing BEFORE photos.

 

Now here is what I did. First thing I did was make the mess even bigger! I took EVERYTHING off the shelf and out of the cubbies and tossed them on the floor. I made three piles- Save, Store, Sell. Once you have your piles then you can start figuring out what you need to do to organize. I realized that some extra baskets and buckets would help me a bunch. 

I taped off an area above the hooks on the wall and painted with some chalkboard paint. Right now it just has one of my favorite quotes on it but in the future I plan to use it to keep the kids reminder notes on them like: field trip Tuesday,  paper due Friday, Spanish test Monday, etc.

I added an old dresser to the closet to provide me with some drawers and took out my handy dandy label maker. Each drawer is labeled with one item (with 6 people in our family we filled these drawers quickly).

We have lots of extra shoes in our house and 12 feet to fill them so I keep the ones that no longer fit for the "extras" pile and use them for my younger kiddos. These baskets work great for that job!

I placed baskets under our bench and labeled those with their names for the current shoes (and boots). Excuse my cheesy flowers over their names...I want to keep it more private.

Last but not least they each have their own "space" for their coats. In the morning I set their shoes for the day, coat for the day and their lunchboxes.

And just for fun- the organization spilled over onto their closets. I couldn't help myself!

A messy closet-just won't do

Hanging all like items together is much better!