Ready for School

We have been organising up a storm in our house over the past week. We are of course getting ready for that exciting event ... the start of the new school year. (In actual fact, I am going to really miss the girls as they return to school and for Bec, start in Prep. I enjoy having them home, but I digress, this particular post is all about ORGANISING ... which I love, love, love.)

We have been setting up "stations" around the house in an attempt to keep the items that belong together, well, together. Of course, we like to make sure David feels included in this whole process so we made sure there was a job for him to do. Task #1 was to install some new hooks at child-height in our front enty so that the girls can hang up their bags when they get in from school. They share bedrooms and there really isn't enough room for them in there and this will make it easier to pack them too. Very convenient. Tick.

Task #2 was to sort out the stationary supplies for each child. I bought a couple of these white planter boxes at Target last year for my kitchen bench and liked them so much I grabbed another 4, one for each of the girls to house their homework books on their desks. This keeps everything easy to access but doesn't take up too much workspace. The blue containers were also from Target and are sink organisers. They have a large section at the back which is perfect for erasers, glue sticks, pencil sharpeners etc and 3 sections at the front which divides their textas, coloured pencils and grey leads/pens. With four of them, there was much fun to be had with my trusty labeller too.

I am still very much in culling mode at the moment (no drawer is safe!) and today we tackled the girls desk drawers. We recycled most of it (lots and lots of papers) and then sorted the things to keep and reorganised the drawers. Their desk space is now looking gorgeous inside and outside.

This is one of my favourite parts of our recent kitchen / living area renovation - the homework stations. This long desk is adjacent to my kitchen and opposite the dining table. The girls can work on their homework close to me but not in my way as I prepare dinner and set the table. I can read out spelling words to them, answer questions and keep them on track. It works perfectly. The only downfall of this area is that is has a large flat surface and is therefore likely to attract all manner of items to it.

So there you go, we are ready to go back to school in our house. How are your preparations going? Only a couple more sleeps...