LIFE
Top Tips For an Effortless Back to School Routine
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It’s back to school time and that means saying farewell to the carefree days of summer and implementing a back to school routine that makes life a little easier.
With early morning wakeups, packed lunches, paperwork and school supplies galore, heading back to school after a summer of late nights and lazy days can seem daunting, but with a few easy tips you can create a back to school routine that makes frazzled mornings less stressful.
Prep The Night Before
School mornings are hard. Between the early morning alarm, getting kids fed, watered and dressed and making sure everyone has their packed lunches and backpacks ready to go, we can often find ourselves running late or feeling stressed. To combat this prep as much as possible the night before.
Pack lunches the night before and place in the fridge.
Lay out clothes – down to undies and socks – before bed.
Place all backpacks and paperwork by the front door before bed.
Create a Packed Lunch Station
Take one shelf of the fridge and place bins on the shelf for different perishable packed lunch items. Items such as yogurts, string cheese, juice boxes and fruit can be placed in individual bins making packing the lunch a breeze. The same goes for non-perishable items. Take one shelf in the pantry and separate non-perishables such as chips, pretzels, crackers, granola bars etc into separate bins.
A Place for Everything
To make it easy for kids to organize themselves create a place by the front door for children to hang their backpacks, lunch boxes and coats. A basket, or shoe caddy is a great place for them to take off their school shoes when coming home.
Create a Homework Station
Choose one area of the home to corral homework supplies. This is a great time of year to stock up on supplies such as glue sticks, pencils, pens etc as most stores offer really great deals on back to school goodies. Multiple children can be given their own labeled plastic pencil box to house everything they need to do homework, or use a caddy to separate pencils, pens, scissors, rulers and glue for easy access. Have a bin, or folder for each child to place homework assignments in so they don’t get lost.
Avoid Paperwork Mayhem
Avoid missing important school paperwork and assignments by having your child empty their backpack every evening and going over any important paperwork. Homework assignments can then be placed in the homework station and field trip forms etc can be dealt with immediately and placed back in your child’s backpack.
Designate a Command Center
With so many school activities going on it can be easier to forget something important, so create a command center somewhere in your home. It can be as easy as taking the side of the fridge to hang a dry-erase board, a calendar and a magnetic notepad. Mark off important dates on the calendar as soon as you get them and jot down reminders on the dry-erase board.
Balance Extracurricular Activities
It can be easy to overschedule kids with all of the extracurricular activities on offer, but try to create a healthy balance. Kids needs downtime too and parents can easily get exhausted ferrying children from one activity to another.
Prep a Week Before School Starts
If your summer has been weeks of late nights and lazy mornings, start prepping the back to school routine a week before school actually starts. Get in the habit of getting the kids to bed early and start waking up at the time you need to for school.
