Life after summer fun requires some adjustments for kids and parents. If your family is like most, you will be dealing with cranky kids that don’t want summer break to end and organizational challenges surrounding schedules and stuff.
Here are some tips on how to avoid the chaos and keep your sanity while going into the new school year.
Andrew Mellen, author of Unstuff Your Life!, offers his organizational holy trinity:
• Designate a home for everything. Every backpack, skirt, homework assignment must have its own place. Get the kids in the habit of placing everything where it belongs.
• Place like with like. All pencils go in one bin; permission slips in one clear envelope; coats on the same row of hooks.
• Something in; something out. When you buy something new, you get rid of something old. No exceptions!
Here are more ways to escape back-to-school clutter from Lisa Gordon a contributor to House Logic.

1. Make a list. Impulse buying is deadly when shopping for school clothes, supplies, field trips, and sports stuff. Take an inventory, make a list of must-haves, and follow it exactly. If it’s not on the list, it doesn’t come into the house.

2. Unpack immediately. Don’t pile up shopping bags full of supplies. Unpack and organize as soon as you bring the bags into the house. That way, you’ll avoid day-before-school chaos.

3. Create a Mommy/Daddy binder. Geralin Thomas, a pro organizer featured on A&E’s show “Hoarders,” says parents should make for themselves a three-ring binder that contains kids’ immunization records, lists of active medications, pediatrician telephone numbers — the information they refer to and write on forms frequently during the school year.

4. Establish a homework zone. Kids’ rooms, dining room table, kitchen counter — just pick a place. Stock the spot with bins, jars, or rolling caddies with school supplies — pens, papers, glue sticks — so kids don’t have to hunt for what they need.

5. Color-code your kids. Assign each child a color: Billy’s blue, Mary’s red. Buy basics — binders, towels, toothbrushes, slippers — in those colors for easy sorting and cleanup.

6. Pick a staging spot. This is where kids put their ready-to-go backpacks each night before bed. In the morning, they just grab and go.

7. Give each child a sports bin. A place in the mudroom or entryway where each kid can put their kneepads, helmets, ballet shoes — all the equipment they need for lessons, practices, and games. Also, tape a checklist for each sport above each bin; i.e., Baseball: cleats, mitt, bat, hat. That way, kids won’t forget what they need.

These are all great suggestions that you will wonder why you haven’t done before.  As the Sarasota County school year approaches one of the biggest challenges for settling into a new home you bought over the summer is to maintain a cool composure about a new school and new after school arrangements so that the kids will adjust easily.  Go here: Info for After School Care

or call Susan Phelps for more info: 941-726-2227.