I had the opportunity to speak with Tracy Hoth, with Simply Squared Away, about best practices to organize our lives as busy moms and families. Some days the clutter and amount of paperwork that comes home can be overwhelming. How do we know what to keep, where to keep it and how long to keep it? As a professional organizer Tracy has great tips to help us get ourselves organized and to help our kids stay organized.
Many times when we look at all the clutter and paperwork mounting on the counter or desk our brains get overwhelmed. Tracy says we need to get to the nitty gritty of our mental block.
Why can’t we organize?
What is stopping us from cleaning up?
Once we recognize what is stopping us from starting then we can flow and begin with one step at a time to organizing our lives.
When it comes to organizing all the paperwork that comes home from school, Hoth recommends the following:
Once we have ourselves on the road to organizational bliss we can then turn our attention to helping our kids organize themselves. Taking time once a week to sit down with children and plan out what they have to do is immensely helpful to teaching them how to organize. It can be a quick check in to help them know what they have coming up that week, what assignments or tests are due and activity schedules.
Tracy has many more great ideas when it comes to organizing ourselves and our families. Listen to episode 24 How to Organize your Paperwork at Home for great tips and tricks and to learn about joining Tracy's online program through her company Simply Squared Away.
Many times when we look at all the clutter and paperwork mounting on the counter or desk our brains get overwhelmed. Tracy says we need to get to the nitty gritty of our mental block.
Why can’t we organize?
What is stopping us from cleaning up?
Once we recognize what is stopping us from starting then we can flow and begin with one step at a time to organizing our lives.
When it comes to organizing all the paperwork that comes home from school, Hoth recommends the following:
- Immediately go through the paperwork and add to a keep or trash pile. If the keep paperwork has an action attached to it then add it to the action bin so you know to follow up on it.
- If a form has a date on it, add to your calendar when the form is due or needs to be completed by.
- For the items that you will keep, put them in the bin. Then when you have more time you can go through that bin and organize it even more.
Once we have ourselves on the road to organizational bliss we can then turn our attention to helping our kids organize themselves. Taking time once a week to sit down with children and plan out what they have to do is immensely helpful to teaching them how to organize. It can be a quick check in to help them know what they have coming up that week, what assignments or tests are due and activity schedules.
Tracy has many more great ideas when it comes to organizing ourselves and our families. Listen to episode 24 How to Organize your Paperwork at Home for great tips and tricks and to learn about joining Tracy's online program through her company Simply Squared Away.