The Best Way To Organize Your School Supplies At Home

Do you find the kid’s school stuff gets scattered all over the floor and seems to end up in multiple rooms? If I told you there was an answer and you could reclaim your home from the never-ending school supplies that spread out all over your home, would you believe me?

I’ve been there, I have 3 kids and they would all dump their school stuff everywhere and it was a nightmare!

That is until I found different solutions to tackle the problems!

Organize Your School Supplies At Home

When it comes to organizing school supplies, the same with adults, not all children organize the same.

This can mean that you need different systems for different children, one system doesn’t fit all kids and finding the right system for each child is important!

It might mean trialing different ways until you find the right fit for each child, but remember if you are trying to force a system onto your child, it might not be the right fit for that child!

Teaching children about organization is going to depend on how you organize and how important it is for you.

Children learn by example, if you are leaving things out of place, don’t expect a child not to follow your lead!

The Best Ways To Organize School Supplies

The different options that you can use to get school supplies organized:

• For those children that just aren’t interested in having everything organized, I used a big plastic tub that had a lid. Everything related to school needed to fit in the tub! (Obviously not uniform or sports equipment that was kept in their closet!)
• Smaller plastic tubs for the more organized child, this is great as they can organize these how they choose!
• Bookcase, this is a great way to see what you have got and to quickly grab what you need.
• Individual desks, this is something that we never had the space for but it would have been perfect for them to have the space to do their homework and to have a desk that they were responsible to keep organized.

School Supply Organization At Home For Kids

Yes, there are times when items are taken to different locations in the home, this is inevitable. However, it’s about getting that child to take their things back to their place for storing their school supplies in.

You need to set some guidelines as to what is acceptable and what isn’t. Homework is about the child learning to take responsibility for their own things, it’s a part of growing up and learning what they need to do and when.

You have to set up systems early on to help them understand that they need to take responsibility for their belongings.

It’s not about being mean, it’s about setting them up to be responsible adults in the future!

They need to learn to take responsibility for the things they are responsible for, including their school supplies and homework!

So, the sooner you start to help your children to understand the importance of organization the easier they will find organizing their own things from school and keeping them under control!

Setting Rules For School Supplies

If you have systems in place that your children need to follow it makes it easier for them to follow the rules that you want following in your home!

It’s not about creating systems that are unrealistic for any adult to follow, let alone a child. What it is about is setting systems in place that help a child follow instructions on where things need to go when they have finished using them.

Teach things like:

• Where to put items that need completing
• Have a place for forms and information that the child needs to pass on to you
• A spot for their things is important, they can’t put something away unless they have a home to go to
• Creating time to organize the things they need for the next day, not moments before running out of the door
• Having a checklist that they can mark off is a great way for building routines in anyone’s life

What’s important is going through what they need to do, sometimes it’s not obvious that there is an issue or they need to do something, guidance is important to help them develop the solution!

How To Organize School Stuff

When children are learning to organize it’s important to help and to show them the benefits of knowing where their items are and where they belong.

However, it’s equally important to let a child develop their own level of organization if you are too pushy about a particular system that you like chances are the child might have different views.

Therefore, it’s important to allow the child to express their own individual style of organizing in the space provided.

Labels and these can be in picture format if your child can’t read helps with identifying areas that items need to go and creating a system that they can understand and deal with.

As a child gets older and has more things to deal with when it comes to school work it’s important to encourage and help but not to do the task for them!

I always started the new school year with:

• Clean boxes to store items like these
• Labels so they could take their organization to their level
• A selection of the essential equipment and a place for any spares, (this was a family storage system for the spares)
• Always having different items so that I was ready for the unexpected
• A discussion on what was expected of them and where acceptable storage of their school supplies could live

It’s important to talk about the boundaries, how are they to know what they should do without talking about it first!

Storage Ideas For School Supplies

If you are looking for ideas for storing your child’s school supplies, then this list is for you!

You need to give your child the tools they need to do the task you are expecting of them, without these the idea of organizing is not something that they are going to know or understand!

I’ve broken this down into different categories so that you can see the area that you need to focus on and work with your child to find the right solution for them.

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Stationery:

When it comes to storing stationery, making it mobile is important if your child needs it at home and school! Consider a pencil case that can hold different objects too! It’s an easy item to pick up cheaply, even a cute sequin pencil case is inexpensive and fun!

If you are looking for something to sit on top of a desk, then this stationery storage is so cute!

School work:

Keeping school work organized is the key to finding everything you need! I always found that storing in containers made organizing easier! I love these cute storage baskets and they would make a great place to store items needed for school!

When school work starts to take over, you need options for different children, I found big plastic boxes with lids worked well for my boys. They weren’t into pretty storage and I wasn’t into having a mess! It was a compromise I was happy with!

Homework:

If you have space for individual workstations for your child I think it is a great idea to get them a desk! A simple desk to sit and work from is a great way to encourage a child to do their homework and to have somewhere to work at that is theirs!

If you are looking for a chair that your kids will sit in? You need to try a ball chair, not only are they good for their posture but it’s also something a bit fun!

Parents paperwork:

Ensuring that you as a parent sees all the paperwork that comes home from school is a challenge, that’s why it’s important to have a place that these papers go! I had a storage basket on my desk that paperwork was put into! It means that nothing gets lost, (well almost nothing!)

Back To School Organization Tips And Ideas

It’s essential that if you are looking to take back your home from the endless supplies then you have to take the lead and offer the storage option that best suits the need of the family and the organization ability of the child.

As I said before, each child is an individual and they will have their own desires and abilities when it comes to organizing school supplies. The more you dictate their organization the more they will rebel.

You have to find a common ground, one that they are able to manage on their own and a system that works for their personality too!

Forcing your ideas onto a child will only end in frustration and failure, believe me, I know first hand after having three very different children who all had different ways of organizing their things!

Helping With Organizing

The best advice is:

• Make it simple
• Let the child take the lead in designing what will work for them
• Help them understand the reasons for behind organizing their things for school
• Help them follow the new routine in keeping all their school supplies organized and ready for the next time they need it

I know it’s tough being a mom, it’s one of the hardest jobs in the world, yet the most rewarding!

But taking back your home from the mess of school stuff all over the place is possible with these simple tips and ideas.

You won’t feel that you are drowning in a sea of school work and school supplies, you will have systems in place that your children can follow, and it will make all your lives a lot easier and a lot less stressful.

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