4 Tips to Improve Your Child’s Organization

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Kids are not necessarily known for their organizational skills, but its something they will need to learn if they want to stay on top of their school work and personal life when they get older. As a parent, there are few things more infuriating than seeing a child with terrible time management; it can affect you, their friends, and your child themselves, so here are four tips to improve your child’s organization. 

Don’t Hoard 

Encouraging your child not to hoard is perhaps one of the most important ways to improve their organizational skills. However, it can be a challenge. Kids don’t really like getting rid of anything, especially when they get to an age where they are convinced they will use something again.  

But, it’s unlikely they will, so if you want to make sure they don’t fill their closet with clutter, encourage them to sell game consoles, clothes, shoes, instruments, and anything they will never use again. They might protest, but you know better. 

Break Down Tasks

Many tasks can be daunting, especially if they feel like mammoth chores that will take hours. This can make your kids procrastinate, which means the duties will never get completed, anyway. 

To overcome this, you can get them to break down the tasks into smaller and more manageable chunks. Rather than asking them to vacuum the house, get them to do it room-by-room. This doesn’t sound so bad, and if they do one room, they might feel they have the time to do another. By the time they’ve finished, they will feel they’re on a roll and be happy to do all the vacuuming in one go. 

Help Them Create a To-Do List

To-do lists are useful for a variety of reasons. They stop your children forgetting their chores and responsibilities, and the satisfaction that comes from crossing something off will motivate them to keep going. 

These to-do lists can also be daunting, though, so you can advise them to separate the list into easy things, such as doing the dishes or taking the dog for a walk, and difficult things, like their essay. This will help them decide which tasks to prioritize. 

Establish a Routine

Routines are something that you kids will need to get into as they grow older, so they may as well establish a routine as early as possible. Otherwise, they risk sleeping in too late every day, which can waste their days off, and this means they don’t have time to do anything. 

By helping them establish a routine, they can organize their day more efficiently, giving them the time to do all the serious hard stuff like homework or chores, and still have time to relax and enjoy their evening once they are finished. 

Neat and Tidy

A tidy room creates an orderly life and mind. Not many people realize it, but clutter and organization can have a severe impact on stress levels and focus. As your kids have enough to worry about when growing up, such as school, crushes, and their future, getting them to stay organized can give them one less thing to worry about. 

How to Inexpensively Organize Your Pantry

Getting your pantry in order has many benefits that extend beyond the organizational appeal. For starters, it facilitates cooking – now, you can find everything easily! This is definitely one of the more useful DIY projects that can reap big dividends for the overall appearance of your kitchen and cooking area.

Before you begin, it’s worth taking a minute to look over the entire space; this way, you’ll have an idea of the food storage solutions that you’ll be getting from Walmart or Target. With further ado, check out this list of organizational tips on making a pantry you can be proud of!

Civilizing Your Pantry

Right before you begin, keep in mind that you want to organize your pantry in a manner that makes maintenance easy – you should be proud of your handiwork in the months and years to come. This isn’t the kind of thing you should need to do every few months, so let’s get it right the first time:

  1. Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

Your very first official act in pantry organization is fairly straightforward: get to cleaning! All those Ziplock bags and tuna cans that are strewn about need to be brought to heel. Take this opportunity to go through all of your canned goods, in fact, and search for the ones with an expired use-by date – if you’re anything like us, you certainly have at least a handful.

Additionally, throw out any cans that, although the date might render them okay, you are certain you won’t be using. Diets and preferences change, and you may no longer be a fan of canned salmon (for example). The point is to obtain as much space as possible, and render the remaining spotless.

At this point, you can start grouping all the similar foods together, and making a note of any plastic (or other) storage solutions you want to pick up to section off the space more economically.

  1. Ideas for Pantry Organizers

A tentative budget for rectifying your pantry is ~ $50 – you can get a lot out of it if you shop at the right places. Consider a combination of storage bins usually used for fabrics, as well as mason jars and generic pantry organizers. Whichever you choose, make sure to have keep an aesthetic consistency as a constant throughout; you don’t want to mix and match different styles for your pantry – otherwise it will look disorganized even when it’s technically organized. Whatever you do, try to avoid mismatched packaging/storage!

On of the primary reasons you might want to favor Mason jars for storage is the ease with which they can be labeled, as well as the sturdiness of the glass against meal moths. There’s also, of course, the fact that they are perfectly transparent. With a marker, you can label the type of food (if necessary), the date you put it inside, and a more readily-readable expiration date. The jars will run you between $8.99 and $10.99 for a dozen of them – which, depending on the size of your pantry, may be all that you need.

Other Pantry Storage Solutions

Pantry organizers just may be the best things since sliced bread. These wooden pull-out drawers can make mincemeat of your pantry space, conveniently sectioning off large areas for similar foods. The fact that they are pull-out reduces the chances that cans or stored goods remain in the back of the cabinet for years at a time; all but forgotten.

If you don’t have any that came with your cabinet set, then you can spend a bit on a set of food storage canisters from OXO for $49.99. This, ultimately, of course depends on your budget – you can get a handful of them at this price, which should be more than enough for any but the largest pantries/set of cabinets. These will put you over budget if you set it at $50, however; but you can always shop around.

Make space for baked goods in with clear canisters or BPA-free plastics with an air-tight seal. These will ensure that flour and sugar remain fresh for an adequate length of time; as well as facilitating inspection of the contents. A white top for these containers is best, so that you can quickly see writing that denotes the important dates (when you bought it, when it expires, etc).

Lastly, you might find it useful to dedicate a smaller drawer space to all of your cooking spices. If your house is anything like ours, you’ll be learning about the benefits of new spices all the time – and will want to add small bottles of them to catapult your cooking to the next level.

This post is a collaborative effort by St. Louis Dad.

Don’t Worry, I Got This

IMG_1749As my wife is getting ready for work she lists of several options of things that I can do with the kids while she is at work. She also reminds me that after she gets off work that she will be going out dress shopping with her sister. She lists off another set of items that I could feed the kids for lunch. I tell her, “Don’t worry, I got this.”

My wife has recently gone back to work. Now, she has been “working”. Babysitting, cleaning, and doing some photography sessions in between. It’s work, there’s no doubt about, but she’s entering back into the other “work”. A job that requires hours and schedules and uniforms. Something that she hasn’t been a part of for a few years. All she has known is the kids. So I get it that she has this unconscious ability to list of things that could be helpful for me while I am with the kids.

abbyandalexinboxThis isn’t my first rodeo with the kids alone. I have had the pleasure of hanging out with the kids several times while mom is out of the house for longer than a day or two. This would be no different. I like to think I know what I am doing. I mean, I can change a tire on my car in 15 minutes. Diapers are easy in comparison. Don’t worry, I got this. I tell myself over and over as a personal mantra.

The house is still clean and the kids have behaved outstandingly. I haven’t shipped them off or given them away…yet. There’s no sense taking that option off the table. They have helped clean and have not complained about what I make to eat either. Bed times have been a breeze and we even got a chance to go out to a couple of stores as well as dinner at Waffle House. My wife is doing her best to help bring some extra money to our household so we can do more awesome stuff. I am proud of her for busting her tail for our family. Don’t worry, we got this.