If you have school age children you know that staying organized is vitally important if you want to maintain harmony in your home. Of course that takes some effort. Here are the four areas to focus your organizing energy. Each of the areas offer huge rewards. Less stress, more time to do what you really want, and a sense of connectedness within your family will be the end result.


Create Routines
Routines make life run more smoothly. A routine clarifies what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. Routines remove the stress of decision making on everyone’s part. Routines rapidly become habits, which mean you can accomplish all the day to day tasks quickly and easily because you don’t have to think about each action. Even when things get topsy-turvy a routine will add a sense of stability. You can create routines for every area of your life. Most essential are morning and evening routines. After school routines are also a very good idea, they can lay out the expectations for things for homework, snacks, chores and more.


Create a Communication Center
A communication center is critical for a busy family. It doesn’t have to be complicated. The essential elements are a large calendar, a place for school papers and message board. All papers that come home from school and need parental attention should land here. It’s the child’s responsibility to get the paper home and unload in the appropriate place. The parent then knows to check each evening for pertinent information. In theory this means no school communication gets lost in the fray. The calendar should be used to identify who is doing what when. At a glance everyone in the household can know where everyone else is. The message board is the place to ask questions or leave comments. A communication center allows a family to stay in touch with everyone without having to be in the same place at the same time. It simple but so effective.


Create Homework Zones
Designate specific areas as approved homework zones and clarify what this means to your kids. This should effectively end the debate about whether doing homework in front of the television is OK. These zones should be clear and flat. Think desks and dining tables. This also means that ‘lost homework’ should become a thing of the past. Too many kiddos wind up doing school work all over the home, meaning that papers get scattered to the far corners. No one wants to be looking under the couch at midnight or shuffling through bedding in the morning for misplaced work.


Create Downtime
Lessen stress by deciding that you will not buy into the ridiculously fast paced world that society has deemed the norm. In a nutshell, stop the insanity that is over scheduling. We only have so many hours a day. If we schedule every single one, it essentially means you will never have time to just be and to connect with your loved ones. A relaxed environment is a healthier, physically and emotionally, for everyone.

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